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UKOUG Day 2

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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 upgrade to Designer / Developer 10g was presented that can' t compete with our Famous solution! The most interesting part of this presentation was the use of Dataload Classic (dataload.net) for playback testing (recording actions in the old forms, playing it back in the new ones).

After that one I went to see Grant Ronald on AJAX UI Development with JSF and ADF Faces. The good news is that we don't have to worry about the (complicated) AJAX stuff, because it's all hidden after the new ADF Faces Rich Client UI objects. And they look really great : Accordions, drag and drop etc.

Next on the program was a session on Rules Manager and Expression Filter: a way to let Oracle watch for incoming data conforming a specific where clause. You can use this feature for information distribution or workflow. Sadly to say that it needs a lot of difficult steps to set up.

Last but not least was Steven Davelaar (again chaired by me) enthousiastic as ever telling en demoing JHeadstart. He showed the new (version 10.1.3) features on Security, Dynamic Menu's, Multi Language Support and Flexible Items. The most impressive news is that also for JHeadstart Oracle is working on a Release 11 version - with all the beautiful AJAX features.... As allways it was hard to keep him to the time schedule ;-).

And now off to the ' community focus pubs' .

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