Scott Spendolini's Blog

I've been a Mac fan since the mid-80s. I was the proud owner of a Mac IIsi and then a PowerMac 7100. Both machines got me through high school & college, where there were Macs-a-plenty. However, once I joined Oracle, I was forced back into the world of Windows. Given that Oracle gave us Windows laptops, that's what I used for the better part of my 10 years there. The closest I came to getting a Mac was a hand-me-down old beater PowerBook G4 667Mhz that I inherited for a while. It worked, but it was definitely not in a rush to do anything. When the screen saver kicked in, the fan immediately spun into high gear. Now that I no longer work for Oracle, I no longer get "free" laptops. I did initially buy a Dell when I left Oracle instead of the Powerbook that I really wanted, as I needed to run Oracle eBusiness Suite & TOAD. Well, here I am almost a year later, the proud new owner of a MacBook Pro. And I couldn't be happier. Well, I could, if I got a ...

I noticed that Donal Daly, who work for the Server Technologies division at Oracle, has started a blog here: http://donaldaly.blogspot.com/ Donal is based out of the Dublin, Ireland Oracle office, and while I was at Oracle, I had the pleasure of working on some projects with him & his team. From what I hear, they are working on a pretty slick Microsoft Access Migration Toolkit, which will be part of Apex 3.0. Donal's team is also responsible for the Migration Workbench , which you can download for free from OTN.

That's right - the title reads Oracle 11g. It's not a typo. In his keynote at Open World today, Oracle's VP of Server Technologies Chuck Rozwat said "the latest version of Application Express lets end-users build applications like a report generator, in as little as 30 seconds time." (see http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3639621 for the complete article) This is excellent news, as this is one of the first official direct mentions of Oracle Application Express being something that Oracle is committed to for the long haul. It should also quell the fears that Apex will go down the same path that WebDB did and become abruptly extinct.

Unfortunately for me, OOW just wasn't in the cards. Starting a new business and having a new baby has left me with little to no free time this year, and I just can't break away for a week. It is nice to see all of the blog posts from OOW, and it seems like Oracle really has taken over a few blocks of downtown San Francisco this year. It's also been a while since I have updated my blog. This is largely the reason: "Little" Isabella is almost 5 months old and has grown to 28" already! Most people think she is 1 year old, based on her height alone. She's already in 12 month clothes, and some of those seem a little tight at times. We don't know where she's getting the "tall gene" from, as noone in our families is excessively tall. In any case, I'll be watching the developments from OOW, so for those who are blogging from there, thanks and keep up the good work!