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ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008 : Day 3 - Experts Day

Building Advanced Tabular Forms was the first subject of the day. In APEX you can build tabular forms (a multi record update form) using a wizard or manually (with the APEX_ITEM API and processing with the APEX_APPLICATION API. Another option is using a collection which gives you full control on the processing - like distributing your data over multiple tables.

After that one Dimitri Gielis presented on Creating Advanced Charts with APEX. He showed the audience what you can do using the charting options of APEX. Impressive!

Next was the Oracle APEX Developer of the Year 2007, Patrick Wolf. His main message is that you can speed up your development process (even further!) when you use the right third party tools. The tools you can't do without as an APEX developer are - apart from Firefox itself:
  • Firebug - a great extension on Firefox
  • Web Developer - another Firefox extension
  • YSlow - a performance monitor, again an Firefox extension
  • Live HTTP Header - to track traffic between the browser and from server, again Firefox
  • APEX Developer Plugin - An extension on APEX that Patrick built, to make your live (even) more easy
  • APEX Essentials - An APEX application to check the quality of your APEX application, free, adaptable and extendible, created by Patrick
  • jquery - A great Javascript pack, this may be included in the next version of APEX
  • APEXLib Framework - A framework, by Patrick, that reduces the writing of code even more
I will report on the presentations of Anton Nielsen and Carl Backstrom later (because I'm at the airport right now and have to get into the plane soon).

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