Scott Spendolini's Blog

As you may have heard by now, Carl Backstrom , one of the APEX developers, was killed in a car accident late Sunday night outisde of Las Vegas, NV.  I met Carl a few years ago when I was still the Product Manager for what was then called HTML DB.  Carl was one of the most enthuiastic people that I have ever met, filled with a seemingly unending supply of energy. His great attitude was only surpassed by his technical expertise and willing to share it with others. Carl would go to great lengths to help complete strangers solve their APEX-related issues on the OTN Forums. My thoughts are with his family, friends and co-workers at this most difficult of times.

While it's still 2008, the planning for ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 has already begun!  And this year, APEX will be bigger than ever, with its own separate track!  So essentially, you can pick a seat in a room, and spend the entire conference in that seat, listening to nothing but APEX presentations all week!  (However, we do encourage you to return to your room at night for some sleep and a shower...) ODTUG has formed an APEX review committee comprimised of John Scott , Dimitri Gielis , Patrick Wolf and myself to help sort through the abstracts and put together the most comprehensive track that we can.  But we can't do it without YOU!  If you've been using APEX at all, and have a great story to tell or want to show off your skills, consider submitting an abstract .   If you're not sure what to present, or want others to help refine your ideas, check out the Kaleidoscope Community and see what others have to say. If selected, you'll get a free pass to...

Just saw that the much anticipated Oracle Data Modeling tool is available for download here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/sql_developer/files/Modeling.html Once you fill out a quick survey, you can download a complete build with JDK, or just the build for your specific OS. I have the Mac OS version up and running, and will be putting it to work today on a number of different projects. I'm glad to see that an enterprise-level data modeling tool has finally come to Mac OS X. One more item on the list can be checked off!