Roels Blog

For the third time in a row I'll be running for ODTUG's Board of Directors. But after ending as a runner up twice, I am sure I'm going to make it this time! But not without your help! My campaign statement this year is: I have been attending and presenting at Kscope conferences since 2007. This not only resulted in a vast amount of knowledge, but also - and even more important - a huge number of friends from all over the globe.  I want to see ODTUG grow and spread this community feeling even more!  My experience as an attendee, presenter and content lead has provided the basic foundation to be a director. Next to that, my personality and (global) network will be beneficial to the whole board and organization.  Since March I have served on the Board of Directors in a limited term for a Director who stepped down due to a career change. This has allowed me to have unique insight of all the things that are going on in and around the ODTUG organization. As the...

This afternoon my Twitter timeline exploded with retweets, likes and congratulations. It all started with this tweet: So it's official now. As Sarah Zumbrum had to step down due to her (dream) move to Oracle, a position on the ODTUG board opened up. And I was asked whether I was still interested. And of course I was! So after an internal voting procedure, I received the good news last weekend - and had to keep quiet for a few days...which was quite hard! Last November I wrote a blog post " I *almost* made it to the ODTUG Board of Directors... ", but now the word between the asterisks can be omitted. I am thrilled to serve on the board - even though it's initially only until the end of the year. I'll definitely run again for the board in October - so you'd better become a member a.s.a.p. to vote for me then (if you aren't already)! Hope to see you all at Kscope16 or any other local event. You can read the official statement on the ODTUG site ...

Last month was the annual election for the Board of Directors of ODTUG. And just like the year before, I was one of the 19 (!) candidates for one of the 5 spots.  During the campaign and election periods I received a lot of positive feedback and my hopes were high - but the competition was extremely strong. During Oracle Open World the results were announced and I was notified I hadn't made it into the top 5 - alas. And after receiving the detailed results it appears I was " that " close ... Also, during the election period, I got some messages saying " if I could vote, I would vote for you ". Of course that kind of support is helpful, but it would be better for me and for ODTUG when those people signed up as either a Individual or Corporate member - see  the ODTUG website . For just $99 you get unlimited access to a wealth of knowledge and you support your favourite user group. So that's just $8.25 per month very well spent ! Thanks to the (larg...

After some thought, I decided I will be running for the ODTUG Board of Directors this year. I have been attending Kscope since 2008 (New Orleans). Presented at Kscope and APEXPosed since 2009. Did a few webinars. Was a member of the APEX Content Team for Kscope12 and 13. And now I am the Content Lead for the APEX track for KScope14 and Kscope15. So I like spending my free time for ODTUG, to keep Kscope the best conference out there. But ODTUG is more than Kscope. And I would love to add my time, expertise and network to ODTUG in order to do more. So that's why I am running for the Board. But it seems I am not the only one running.... As for four positions, there are 24 nominations. Twenty-four! That means the changes are slim, but it shows how vivid ODTUG is. Most organisations that run on volunteers have a hard time filling these kind of positions. ODTUG doesn't. I don't have a full list of names, but I now know about six of them. And they are all well known persons and...

A few days back Mike Riley interviewed me (via e-mail) about my ODTUG / Kaleidoscope experiences. You can see the results here .  Hope to see you all soon in Long Beach!

Last week the first European OPP / APEXposed ever was held in Brussels. And just like the US originals - which I actually never was able to attend - this also was a huge success, when you listen to all the positive feedback and comments issued in the hallways of the Brussel's Sheraton.  In two days there were 9 sessions to attend in 4 to 5 tracks. And even which such a relative small number of tracks it was hard to pick just one...so many interesting presentations! APEXposed kicked off with a keynote by Patrick Wolf, in which he addressed all the nice new APEX 4.0 features at a glance. All of these features deserved a presentation on their own, and luckily most of them got one during the conference. Next I attended a session by Steven Feuerstein (he did 8 ! in these two days) about PL/SQL for APEX Developers. The key thing here was: develop your application as it was a regular PL/SQL based application, so use packages, test thoroughly, handle your errors well and code as less PL/S...

As you might know, next week (Oct 27 and 28, 2010) the first ODTUG's OPP/APEXposed conference will be held in Europe - in Brussels that is. And even for such a small conference (compared to OOW, ODTUG Kaleidoscope and UKOUG), it is hard to choose the sessions. For every session you select, there are at least two or three other ones you would like to attend also! But I managed to create a nice schedule for myself. During the conference I might change plans - so no guarantee.... And yes, I have one of the final slots - just before the APEX and PL/SQL quizzes.

The last day of this great conference had "only" three presentation slots. The first one I attended, but honestly I didn't pay that much of an attention. I was writing my previous post at that time and I was rather familiar with the subject " Forms to APEX conversion ". And I totally agree with the conclusions: Converting simple Forms is easy, but the more complex the Forms, the more work it will take to convert it to APEX! The second one was called " APEX Stimulus Package ". In fact it was more or less a list of things you have to consider to improve the performance of your APEX application - also due to the fact that most demo's didn't work because of a failing internet connection.  To name some of the tips: Reduce images sizes and use png instead of gif or jpg; check the Apache log for errors and resolve them; add a favicon.ico; watch out with pagination schemes; tune your Page 0 processes; use Page and Region caching where appropriate; min...

This day started off with a very nice presentation about the joys of Javascript by Dan "The Man"McGhan. In a very nice pace he took the audience by the hand and increased the difficulty level step-by-step. His key message was; Don't be scared of Javascript, because if you look close enough it is looks more like PL/SQL than you might think at first sight. Get to learn jQuery and do your thing! Another nice presentation was about " RESTful Web Services " by Jason Straub. He demoed how you can use webservices withing APEX to manage the buckets and contents on an Amazon S3 cloud environment. He also pointed out that not only APEX can consume webservices, but also can act as the source of a webservice. In order to achieve that you have to create a report on a public page that returns either XML or Json. He didn't show a demo, but promised to get out a paper or how-to out there next week. Have to try that myself soon! Another fine session was Tim St. Hilaire '...

One of the highlights of todays conference was the " Plug-In Showcase " where Anton, Dietmar, Dan, Dimitri and Doug each showed a plugin they wrote the last couple of days. They showed some real simple ones, like a hover function up to more complex things like a Netlfix style drag and drop functionality. The conclusion is; Once you get the hang of it, writing Plug-Ins isn't that hard - and using good Plug-Ins is very simple. So Plug-Ins enhance your development speed dramatically and can be an enormous improvement to your end-user experience. One other session was about changing the look-and-feel of your APEX page, using the templates and changing the css. The new Theme 4 in APEX 4.0 is even shipped with PSD (Photoshop) files that contain the sprites (a collection of images within one file) used within that template. You can edit these files in order to change the look of the buttons, regions and whatever else there's on your page. Another nice one was " Oracle T...

I am very proud to announce that in the latest ODTUG Technical Journal one of the articles is written by yours truly. It is all about the integration of Forms and APEX. See this link . You have to be a member to download it (but I think you can become an Associated Member for free) - or you have to wait until the next release is out, then the one before will be freely accessible.

The day started with the General Session. There the ODTUG Board announced when en where the next Kaleidoscope will be held: At Long Beach, California! From June 26 to 30 2011. And you can even submit papers as from now! There is a link somewhere, and if I'll find it I'll add it to this post. Another remarkable thing was that the number of attendees this year was up with 50% to around 900! So ODTUG grows bigger and bigger every year - and so even getting more important in the Oracle world. Next - and rather important - was the game...The Netherlands against Slovakia. We saw the match with a couple of other attendees, most of them Dutch, but also some other guys - but all supporting Holland And we won with 2-1, which was great. So in the next match we have to beat Brazil - which will be though! Back to the stuff we all here for... The first afternoon session was the " APEX 4.0 Keynote ", where Mike showed all the cool new APEX 4.0 features for an interested audience ...

On Saturday I had a very well scheduled travel from my home to Washington. Even the plane departed and arrived exactly as scheduled. And while the line for the US Border Security was quite long, it only took half an hour or so to take that hurdle. I have seen worse (1,5 hour in Houston), but also better (5 minutes in Minneapolis). In my shared shuttle drive to the hotel the impression I didn't get an impressive view of Washington: just the regular broad streets packed with stores and restaurants. Once out of the shuttle the impression is that it is impressively hot and humid. Not as bad as New Orleans, but still. After registration I went for a Indian dinner with Monty and Mark, I even managed to stay up until 10PM (and that with a 6 hour time difference). Due to that time difference I first woke up at 4AM, but managed to stay sort of sleeping until 6AM. Still to early for breakfast, but that gives me the chance to write this short blog post. Today there are two important things ...

During last weeks ODTUG Mike Hichwa presented APEX 4.0. This seemed to be the best attended session (apart from the 'real' keynotes) with over 200 attendees, so a lot of people wanted to know where their favorite development environment is heading! Mike demoed some really cool new stuff - I will discuss these later on - and skipped (even more) nice features, with Declarative Tabular Forms, AJAX Client-Side Validations and Improved Error Handling make the top 3 of most interesting ones. See the pic of the slide for a complete list. Websheets There has been more blogging about Websheets last year, even with movies. But every time you see it live, it is amazing. Just copy data from a CSV, paste it into the APEX Builder and you're done! No Tables, Triggers, Primary Keys, etc needed: everything is automatically managed in APEX$xxx tables. You can update the data in line (like a Tabular Form), you can do mass update, create an LOV on the fly and add columns. You can also add Atta...

Still recovering from a light jet lag, it is time to look back at another excellent ODTUG event. Although I planned to blog about it on a daily basis, the social/networking activities prevented that... (a.k.a. "I rather drink a beer with some friends and have a good chat, that write another blog post" ). So here's a (rather) long wrap up of this fantastic event! Sunday June 21: APEX Symposium The symposium, with around 200 attendees, started at 8:00 AM (attending ODTUG is really hard work!). The day started with a sort of keynote by Joel Kallman , followed by 6 presentations of real world APEX applications and was finished off with a Panel discussion. Some highlights of the day: Joel did an excellent presentation called Application Express: Ahead of the Curve . He explained that APEX is still ahead of it's time and therefore will still gain (even) more interest in the market. Especially because of the high speed development, you can create all kinds of applications wi...

Today I drove down from SFO to Monterey via the scenic coastal route. At first I had some problems with my car: it is the first time I drive a car with an automatic gearbox, so I have to keep remembering to leave my left foot just where it is.... In Monterey I first went to the Bay Aquarium. It was quite busy there, but once you've seen it, you know why. I especially liked the jellyfish and the octopus. Just beautiful! At the aquarium I already met "the Insum guys": Francis and Patrick. Back at the hotel I met more old acquaintances, visiting ODTUG again is just like a high school reunion... After dinner and some beers, the jetlag is really kicking in...my computer tells me it's 6 AM and I feel tired... Looking forward to the sessions of tomorrow!

After a long long journey I finally made it to my hotel next to San Francisco Airport. I can see the planes as they come and go, but luckily can't hear them. The first leg of my trip, from Amsterdam to Cincinnatti, wasn't that bad: I had a complete row of three chairs for myself! Delta provided everyone with earplugs and blindfolds, so I stretched my legs and took some naps (still don't know if it is a good idea to take as much sleep as you can on a flight or to try to stay awake as long as you can, in order to survive a none hour time lap). The offerings on the entertainment system where good enough and even the food was ok. I had less then two hours to change planes in Cincinnatti, and - with the experiences of the Sam Francisco and Houston Immigration lines - I wasn't certain that that would be enough. To my big suprise there was no line at all (I don't want to call three people in fron of me a 'line')! I even had to wait at the luggage belt before my su...

Check out the full schedule of ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 . So many sessions..so little time. And even more frustrating: in every timeslot there are at least three must-see sessions! Luckily I have another couple of months to decide where to go (and what I have to skip). You can view the schedule here . (I have to compete with Scott Spendolini for the APEX crowd...)

Yesterday evening I received an e-mail from the Speaker Coordinator of ODTUG's Kaleidoscope 2009 that my abstract on How to integrate APEX and Oracle Forms? has been accepted for presentation! I'm looking forward to present and to meet again all the great people I met at the previous event in New Orleans. I have 'some' time to create the actual presentation - with some nice demo's of course - because the event is starting about half a year from now. If you have any specific subject on this matter you would like to see during my presentation, please drop a comment!

From the Sheraton to the airport I shared a cab with Carl Backstrom and arrived around 2 hours before the scheduled departure. I only had a 37 minute transfer time in Houston so I had picked a chair in the front of the plane - just after the business class. The plane left the gate exactly on time, but it stopped on the runway. Due to a thunderstorm the airport closed for 30 minutes.... So when I got out of the plane in Houston my transfer time was reduced to -2 minutes. The plane to Amsterdam was somewhere at the same pier - but that pier is really huge. So I started the 1 kilometer walk without any (positive) expectations. But to my suprise that plane was scheduled 45 to 60 minutes later! I've never been so happy with a delay.... The flight was o.k. In the 10 hours flight I snoozed a little and arrived in Amsterdam at the original scheduled time. My wife and daughters waited there for me, so it was a good homecoming!