Roels Blog

The last day of the conference already... The day started with a presentation on Datamodelling using JDev . The presenter showed how JDev could replace Designer for modelling. Imho JDev doesn't support logical modelling at all (he misused Java class models to represent a logical model), there is no repository and no relation between a logical and physical model. For just physical modelling JDev is fine, because all 11g database options are included. This modelling option will become available in SQL Dev also.... After that I went to see my esteemed colleague Peter Lorentzen's talk on How to make your APEX Application Secure . He stated that APEX is secure, but developers make it unsecure . Nice statement Peter! One of his (many) good advices was not to use XE for an APEX (open) production environment as XE is not patched and you will be vulnerable to all kinds of attacks. He also showed a script attack by adding a small "Hello World" script as a value for a database v

The (rather ambitious) schedule for today was : Lost in JDeveloper by Sten Vesterli : Sten guided the (Forms experienced) audience in creating an ADF Swing Client App ofcourse declaratively (next to AJAX this is the buzzword of the conference : everything should be declarative, you can be a programmer when you' re able in controlling your mouse ;-) ). Programming Real Applications with APEX by Andrew Woodward : Again everything declarative but now using APEX instead of JDev. The point was: you can create simple applications faster than using Oracle Forms but when you need more advanced features you'll need to program Javascript and AJAX. But that's only temporarily, because in the next version(s) you also will be able to create AJAX components declaratively . Modelling on the cheap by Andrew Clarke (I chaired this one) : Andrew sketched out the pros and cons of different modelling tools - from whiteboards to (free) datamodelling tools. As far as he knows the best free da

After yesterdays Blogger Meetup it was hard to start the day... The first session of the day was Sue Harper's talk on SQL Developer Latest Features . She mainly focussed on the new / enhanced features of version 1.5, that will be production somewhere (early?) 2008. To name some new features : external authentication (OPS$ users), browsing queues and Java, schema differences and schema copy, recall filters and a flashback query tab, formatter enhancements, your own code templates and drill down reports. With very new version SQL Developer looks more like the current TOAD version ;-). After that I visited a session about Building Rich UI with APEX and AJAX . It was pretty impressive what you can do with a combination of APEX and AJAX (look at ajaxpatterns.org . The presenter also showed the use of widgets of the jQuery UI library like an accordion and a fancy date picker ( jquery.com ). The next session about the Roadmap for legacy system migration I chaired. A solution for the up

After a rough flight yesterday I arrived in Birmingham. The city has a complete Christmans atmosphere, as you might expect at this time of year. There even is a 'real' Frankfurter Christmas market with ' Beer und Bratwurst ' and hot wine - and lots and lots of other more or less Christmas related stuff. I made some pictures, but on my (new) laptop the drivers for the camera are not installed yet, so I'll add the pictures later on... This morning the UKOUG started with two keynotes on '30 Years of Oracle'. The one of Tom Kyte was amusing as ever. At that moment I realised that I volunteered to introduce him this afternoon, probably for an audience of over 1,000 people. I'm more nervous about that than about my own presentation! After that I went to an presentation on APEX 3.1 New Features . This version is already available on OTN (not for download, but to play with) and has a lot of interesting and nice looking features. For instance the end-user can dyn