Scott Spendolini's Blog

That's right - Oracle HTML DB has officially been renamed to Oracle Application Express . You still don't need Oracle Application Server, and it has nothing to do with Oracle Express or Express Objects, but it does coincide with the name of Oracle Express Edition Database. This renaming campaign came up once every few months or so when I was at Oracle, as we could never quite come to a consensus on what it should be renamed to. Looks like somoene finally made the call! My only fear with this new name is that people will associate Application with Oracle Application Server, as in it's a required component (as I said before, it still isn't) and Express with "small and insignificant", which is clearly not the limitations of HTML DB - umm, Application Express. It's going to take some getting used to...

Well, not really, as that would be bad. However, I’ve often wondered how to include a field for the username and password on every public page, making the sign on process one less click. Well, there’s nothing like learning how to do something like having a customer requirement! A current client wants a largely public site – that is, you do not need to authenticate to see most of it. Simple enough – just set the Page Attributes Security to Page is Public . However, the client also wanted the username and password field to appear on each and every public page. From a developer point of view, I didn’t want to have to put any items on any page aside from Page Zero. Thus, every time that I add a page to the application, the login region would simply show up. This required a bit more thought. Here’s what I came up with: I created a region on Page Zero which holds my username and password fields, as well as a Login button. The button is not an item button, but rather a true button whi...

As Laurent Schneider reported , a new version of Project Raptor has been released on OTN .

Starting your own business makes you learn how to play many roles: project manager, consultant, marketing department, technical support, “executive”, and – worst of all – accountant. I say that because I really, really, really hate accounting. Maybe I just had a bad experience in college, and could never really appreciate it. Perhaps I’m even a bit ignorant about it. In any case, there’s software out there to help someone like me. Right? I bought QuickBooks based on several recommendations from co-workers. The folks at Intuit have done a tremendous job! That is, if their job was to create the most un-user friendly, non-intuitive, archaic piece of software. I don’t even know where to start. They tried way too hard to over-engineer the UI. Everything is “cute”, with arrows, icons, and more reminders than I care to mention. In an attempt to account for every possible “use case”, they have created something that is far less usable than intended. All I need to do is send out invo...