To V or not to V...

Earlier today, I tweeted the following:

After this morning, I don't think I will 
ever use the "v" function again. #orclapex

I wanted to qualify what I meant by that, since sometimes you only see one side of the conversation on Twitter. Also, it's been a while since my last post, so this give me the opportunity to remedy that as well. The APEX "v" function works, and works quite well. For those who have not used it, the "v" function is an APEX-specific function that when you pass an APEX item to it, it will return the value of that item for a specific user session. What's cool about it is that it also works from named PL/SQL program units, as long as they were initiated from an APEX session. Thus, you can write a PL/SQL package that takes in few, if any parameters and still can refer to items that are set in the APEX session state via the "v" function:

PROCEDURE foo
IS
  l_customer_name   VARCHAR2(255) := v('P1_CUSTOMER_NAME');
BEGIN
...
END;
/

The specific issue that I had was that I did used the "v" function in quite a few places across a suite of PL/SQL packages. It cut down on what I needed to pass from package to package, and even allowed me to omit some procedures from the package specification. It worked magnificently. That is, until I tried to call one of the packages from SQL*Plus. Since there is no APEX session context set in SQL*Plus - and even if there was, which you can do, the items that I required to be set would not be - my package failed spectacularly. Thus, I had to go back through several packages and retro-fit them to be APEX-agnostic and remove all traces of the "v" function in favor of parameters. The lesson to learn from this is simple: take some time to consider whether or not you think a block of code will ever be called from outside of APEX. Even if there is a remote chance that it will, it may pay off big time later if you choose to make that code APEX-agnostic and rely on parameters instead.

Where Did You Go?

Not only is the title of this post a great song by one of my all time favorite bands (extra credit if you can name them w/out using Google) but is a question that some of you have been wondering...

Most of my time the past few months has been spent on designing & developing sumnevaSERT - a security evaluation tool built in APEX for APEX. sumnevaSERT is the result of working with many customers over the past few years and realizing that they spent very little time reviewing the security of their APEX applications. They all had the same exact reason for neglecting them: no time.

 sumnevaSERT makes it blindingly simple to evaluate an APEX application for a number of potential security flaws. It slices through the APEX metadata and produces a single score based on what it finds. You can then drill into any of the categories to see details and advice on how to fix what it finds.

 Despite releasing it today, we've already got a list of exciting new features and enhancements - many of which will make it even easier and faster to secure your applications.

 Check out the sumnevaSERT page on our website: http://sumneva.com/sert - or, if you're interested in a free trial, drop us a line at info@sumneva.com

ODTUG Webinar: APEX Team Development & Agile PM

Patrick Cimolini will be conducting a FREE webinar on Tuesday, November 16th at 3:00PM EST entitled "APEX Team Development and Agile Project Management" sponsored by ODTUG.

Here's the abstract for the session:

The release of Oracle Application Express (APEX) version 4.0 has brought the product to a high level of maturity. This maturity is clearly demonstrated by the addition of the Team Development module. Team Development captures features, to dos, milestones, and bugs. Feedback from all hands-on stakeholders (including end users) is captured by the Feedback feature that can be installed declaratively in one or two minutes. This Webinar briefly describes Team Development and shows how it can be configured to work successfully with an Agile Project Management methodology.

If you haven't seen Patrick present at ODTUG before, then you can't miss this!  His knowledge of APEX is only surpassed by the wisdom that he has about project management in general.

You can sign up for it here and remember - there is no charge for this session!

New Oracle APEX Hashtag: #orclapex

I saw a Twittersation - or however you say Twitter + Conversation - between Martin D'Souza & Dan Mcghan about a potential new hashtag for Oracle APEX. This, in my opinion, has been a long time coming, since #apex will bring back anything from Oracle APEX to the upcoming APEX show in Las Vegas to Apex, NC to even a tattoo shop.

Martin suggested #orapex, which could likely get spelled #oraapex or #orapex, and thus added to the confusion.  Dan then chimed in with #oralcle_apex, which I thought was a spot long and replied with #orclapex.

I guess I won, because in the time it took to get my kids to bed, there was a blog post as well as other Tweetsin in multiple language, thus further justifying its logic!  And if it's on the Internet in not just one, but TWO places, then is HAS to be true!

Thus, while the iron is hot, might I be so bold to propose a new hashtag for Oracle Aces: #orclace.  The current one - #aced - pulls back more high school kids proclaiming victory over a challenging history test than it does Oracle-related content.

Thus, with these two new, sleek, streamlined hashtags, it would be possible to tag an APEX tweet with both #orclapex and #orclace and actually have over 120 characters left for actual content.

Thoughts?

APEXposed 2010 Dallas Discounts

The APEXposed conferences are almost here!  Brussels will kick off first on October 28th and Dallas will follow shortly after that on November 10th & 11th.

If you're on the fence about attending, then perhaps this will push you over:  If you sign up with the code APEX, you will get $150 off of the registration fee!  And one of the first ten people to use the code APEX will get a completely free registration!

That's only $450 for ODTUG members and $500 for non-members.  Remember - not only will you get to see some of the top APEX experts in the industry, but you can also attend any session in the PL/SQL track - all for one price!  Hope to see you there.

Comment Moderation Enabled

Hate to do this, but I have to turn on comment moderation.  Too many spammers out there, trying to convince me that my blog is the best blog in the world!

I'll still approve anything that's legitimate; just want to see if I can get a handle on the noise...

An Oracle Hat-trick!

I'm sure that Kris Rice will appreciate the Hockey analogy, as his team has brought not one, not two - but THREE EA releases to market this week with the addition of the APEX Listener EA that was just announced!

SQL Developer 3.0 EA Released

On the heels of the Oracle Data Modeler tool, SQL Developer 3.0 EA 1 was just released to the wild.  There's quite a number of new and/or enhanced features - most of which seem to be quite useful.  A complete list of the new features can be found here.

My favorite thing so far?  It uses a fixed-width font in the data grids. It's the little things...

However - a feature that is noticeably absent is the ability to automatically apply the APEX refactoring results.  It would be nice if that after it generated the corresponding packages, it could replace all of the PL/SQL with the stubs to call each procedure.  That would make refactoring truly useful, especially in environments with a lot of APEX applications that need to be better managed.