Roels Blog

In a couple of weeks ODTUG's Kaleidscope 2008 takes off. This years theme seems to be: APEX, APEX and again..APEX. At least, for me it is. Because my preliminary schedule is packed with 24(!) APEX sessions in 5 days. So at Thursday afternoon I should know everything I always wanted to know about APEX, but were afraid to ask . I'm looking forward visiting New Orleans and meet again some friends from the Oracle blogosphere. I will report back my findings here! So here's the schedule: Date From To Title Presenter Sunday 9:00 10:00 Managing the Army's Enterprise Real Property Planning with Oracle APEX Bharat Pappu and Brian Duffy 10:00 11:00 Creating Dynamite Applications that Deliver Kathy Hunsicker 11:15 12:15 Oracle Application Express: Power to the People Rich Mutell, Dimitri Gielis, John Scott 13:00 14:00 How IntelliReal used Oracle Application Express to Rapidly Build their Production Environment Chris Ostrowski 14:00 15:00 Mastering Unreasonable...

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...

The first week of December I'm visiting the UKOUG in Birmingham. This is my first visit, and I will not only attend sessions, but also chairing a couple and even presenting one. Luckily my presentation is on the first day (Monday 15:20), so I can enjoy the rest of the conference without being nervous... My presentation is on the automatic transformation of Oracle Forms to Java, so if you're interested: come to the show in Birmingham (or the Pro4Pro in Amstelveen on December 11). I've got a very interesting - and busy - schedule for this week. And apart from this schedule I will visit the Blogger Meetup on Monday. And besides attending sessions I hope I can make the time and energy to (re)contact a lot of people I met in San Francisco last year or that I know of from the net only. I hope to meet you there! I will post some report back on this conference, so return later on. Monday 08:00 - 18:45 REGISTRATION OPEN 10:30 - 19:40 EXHIBITION OPEN 09:05 - 09:10 Welcome f...

From the 11g New Features Guide: "New in 11.1 is the ability to mark a PL/SQL function to indicate that its result should be cached to allow lookup, rather than recalculation, on the next access when the same parameter values are called. This function result cache saves significant space and time. Oracle does this transparently using the input actuals as the lookup key. The cache is system-wide so that all distinct sessions invoking the function benefits. If the result for a given set of actuals changes, you can use constructs to invalidate the cache entry so that it will be properly recalculated on the next access. This feature is especially useful when the function returns a value that is calculated from data selected from schema-level tables. For such uses, the invalidation constructs are simple and declarative. Concurrent, multi-user applications that use this feature experience better response times. Applications that implement a session-private scheme consume significantly l...

My company took part in the Oracle 11 g Beta test and I also ran some (small) test on the new PL/SQL features. One of them is that access to sequences is allowed in PL/SQL, so no need to "SELECT tst_seq.nextval INTO n FROM dual" anymore! DECLARE   n NUMBER; BEGIN   SELECT seq.nextval   INTO n   FROM dual; END; can now be coded as DECLARE   n NUMBER; BEGIN   n := seq.nextval; END; For "currval" the same solution is possible. So there is no need for a cursor anymore, but more important to me : the usability and readability of the PL/SQL is code is enhanced by this new feature.

In SQL Developer v1.2 the trigger tab for views is missing. You can add this tab (and many many others you can think of) by using User Defined Extensions. Create an XML file with the definition of the tab: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <items>   <item type="editor" node="ViewNode" vertical="true">     <title><![CDATA[Triggers]]></title>     <query>       <sql>         <![CDATA[select table_owner                 , trigger_name                 , trigger_type                 , triggering_event       ...

Yesterday the design environment (JDev) for WebCenter Suite was released. After the demo by Thomas Kurian at OOW2006 I was very curious about this new product. The WebCenter Suite is the first result of the Fusion stack: The Oracle Fusion developers needed it to build the Fusion apps. But now we can use it too! The WebCenter Framework (the runtime environment) will be available any day now. Using the Framework you can use out-of-the-box WebCenter Services, like Content Management, Search, Presense Server, Instant Messaging, Wiki and Forums. WebCenter supports building applications by putting small blocks of UI together. So after modular development in PL/SQL (what every developer should do), and modular development of services - using SOA - we can now develop modular UI blocks and put these all together to build a even more user friendly process driven work environment for the end-user. I hope I can spend some time in the near future to try out this new product. The development team is...

Today I discovered that Firefox crashes when I started up an Oracle Forms application using JInitiator. One thing I noticed that two JVM's were started (two icons showed up in the taskbar). After switching off Java inside Firefox (via Tools->Options->Content) everything works fine. So no need for IE anymore...

Assume we have a table of locations like Name Null? Type ----------------------------------------- -------- ----------------- ID NOT NULL NUMBER NAME NOT NULL VARCHAR2(50) and a table of possible lines (or route parts) like Name Null? Type ----------------------------------------- -------- -------- ID NOT NULL NUMBER FROM_LOC_ID NOT NULL NUMBER TO_LOC_ID NOT NULL NUMBER DISTANCE NOT NULL NUMBER How can we calculate the best route (in this case: the route with the shortest distance) from a startpoint to an endpoint? The answer is: By using an hierarchical query: select dep_name , arr_name , route , distance , execute(distance) total from ( select connect_by_root dep.id dep_id , conn...

On November 9th my employer, LogicaCMG, organised it’s own version of Oracle Open World, but just a little bit smaller. About 130 colleagues came to Amstelveen to listen to the keynote (after a good dinner) and after that three times a choice from one of the three parallel sessions. As usual the evening was very well organised (thank you committee!), but there was some experience as it was already the 7th version of this annual event. The keynote speaker was Rob Blaauboer who enlightened us about Innov8 (the 8 should be the mathematical infinite sign, but I can’t find that one on my keyboard), a method to visualize what technologies a company should adopt or look in to in the nearer or farther future. The first parallel session I visited was Oracle2Go by Reza and Robert. Oracle2GO is a framework as an extension of the ADF Framework, to develop applications faster and with higher quality. They mentioned a couple of success stories and proudly pointed out that they managed to achieve a ...

Due to a pleasant evening on Wednesday, I had to skip the first session (at 8:00!). But at the start of the second session, Test-Driven Development in the World of PL/SQL by PL/SQL Evangelist Steven Feuerstein, I was quite awake. Steven demonstrated - in his own special interesting way : what a great presenter! - the advantages of Test Driven Development. The message: Specify your testcases and build your test program before you even start building the program-to-test! . He also announced and demonstrated Quest Code Tester, what looks like a great tool to support PL/SQL unit tests. I surely will try this out soon. Available for download at ToadWorld , free until the end of February. After that one I went to Peter Koletzke for a session with the - rather long title Oracle JDeveloper 10g with Oracle ADF Faces and Oracle JHeadstart: Is it Oracle Forms Yet? . He pointed out the similarities and dissimilarities between Oracle Forms and JDeveloper - with and without JHeadstart. His conclusi...

Wednesday was Keynote Day. First in line was John Wookey, who emphasized the continuity of the complete Oracle Applications stack and pointed out a couple of new features and enhancements in the future releases of Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and the E-Business Suite. In this timeslot Giovanni Contino of Ducati got 15 minutes to present himself as an "happy customer". The two Ducati motorbikes that drove through the hall were rather cool. After this break John continued with the four key values of the new features of the products: Search: A Google look-a-like search engine to search through structured and unstructured enterprise data. XML based reporting: Using XML Publisher to create good looking reports. Role based analytics: Presenting exact the information the user needs given his role. Sustainable Integration: Creating a layer above all the different applications, so the end users doesn't even know what application he's using. Then he showed a Sneak Previ...

On this Tuesday I spent the whole day at the Hilton (only 1,5 block from our hotel) attending sessions from the Developer track. The day started of with the Developer keynote of the day : Tom Kyte with Things you think you know . The message was that things (read "Oracle software") changes over time and with every Oracle update your knowledge needs an update too. The quote of the day : "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things you know that just ain't so or just ain’t so anymore or just ain’t always so." This great presentation (especially if it's presented by the master himself) is also downloadable from asktom . You can get an impression by watching the first 3 minutes on video from Eddy Awad's site . The second session of the day was Oracle BPEL Process Manager Performance and High Availability by Francis Ip and Randy Stafford. This was the only session at OOW where I misjudged my knowledge (o...

For me this Monday started with an (Developer) Keynote by Thomas Kurian: The next application platform . Thomas pointed out three main trends : SOA, Information Driven Architecture an Grid Computing Architecture. For the developers (about 1200 in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton) he mentioned the tools Oracle offers for building applications on the 3-tier architecture (of course: JDev, SOA Suite and SQL Developer). The most important announcement was the availabilty of the Oracle Developer Depot , were you can easily download an install Java applications to facilitate code reuse and simplify the development process. Of course you can upload your work to this comunity. You can even win a meet and greet with Larry (or an HD TV) if your software is selected as "the best". For the next session a headed over to Moscone for The Future of DB Technology by Andy Mendelsohn. He addressed (a.o.) the next interesting new products / features / options : Information Lifecycle Management H...

For me OOW started on Sunday morning with the ODTUG Oracle Developer Suite Special Interest Group Meeting in the Hilton. In this session 2 Oracle Emps of the Forms and Designer Development Depts answered questions of the audience. The highlights : The main goals for Forms 11 are : better Application Server integration; higher interoperability (with webservices, BPEL and browser); ease of upgrade. JInitiator will be replaced by (native) JVM WebUtil will be a part of Forms (not a seperate utility anymore) Forms PL/SQL scanner that checks the quality of the code No plans for extra UI widgets Oracle Applications is migrating to Forms 10gR2, so Forms is here to stay XML Publisher is the standard reporting tool in Applications (you can imagine the consequences for the future of Oracle Reports) Designer 11 will not contain any new functionality, just a new version to keep up with Forms Of course no time frame for the release has been given. At 6:00 pm Charles Phillips had the honour of kicki...

Back in the office it’s hard to imagine that it was only a week ago that I was in San Francisco for the “greatest Oracle show on earth”. So many people (over 40,000), such huge session rooms at the Moscone (at least 200 attendees could fit in), 7 really big screens in the keynote arena with impressive audio visual performances…etc, etc. Golden Gate Bridge And every hour these 40,000 people moved their way from one room to another - as if you would evacuate a small city! And still they managed to feed all these attendees without creating long waiting lines. What a great logistic performance. Especially when about 25,000 people where moved to and from the Cow Palace on Tuesday night to watch Sir Elton J. Alas there were a few drawbacks. The most irritating thing was that a lot of people were so important (at least that’s what they were thinking), that during sessions they kept their cell phones on with really loud ringtones. And even dared to pick up the phone when it rang and talked out...

As other bloggers I also publish my OOW2006 schedule. It was hard to choose between 70 parallel sessions, but IMHO I succeeded in planning a nice schedule: I'll arrive on Friday, so on Saturday I have one day to recover from the jetlag and visit some interesting sites in San Francisco (also plan a schedule for this touristic part of my visit). Sunday ODTUG Oracle Developer Suite (Forms and Reports) Special Interest Group Meeting I am a user of some of the ODTUG mailing lists. I hope to meet a couple of the people I read posts from for a couple of years. IOUG Oracle Application Express (APEX) Special Interest Group Meeting There is - sadly - very little about APEX during OOW and I'll plan to visit most of the sessions with APEX in the title. Build a Dynamic Menu Framework with Oracle Application Express And this is also one of the APEX-sessions Monday Developing PL/SQL Programs, Using Automated Unit Testing by my English colleague Andrew Clarke - I'm looking forwar to meet h...