It's been a while since I've updated my blog. I've been quite busy lately, and just have not had the time that I used to. We're expecting our 1st child in just a few short weeks now, so most of my free time has been spent learning Lamaze breathing, making the weekly run to Babies R Us, and relocating my office from the larger room upstairs to the smaller one downstairs - which I do happen to like MUCH more than I had anticipated. I have everything I need within a short walk - a bathroom, beer fridge, and 52" HD TV. I only need to go upstairs to eat and sleep now, but alas, this will all change soon... Recently, I was asked if you could change the way Export to CSV in ApEx works. The short answer is, of course, no. But it's not too difficult to "roll your own" CSV export procedure. Why would you want to do this? Well, the customer's requirement was to manipulate some data when the Export link was clicked, and then export it to CSV in a forma...
Comments
* "You cannot have more than 10 tables shown on the same page." [Just plain wrong, did this guy pull a random number out of his behind?]
* "You cannot change the template for your pages after creating your project." [Again, wrong. Guess he gave up before he found the select list called "Page Template".]
* "The source code ends up in a database, so version control becomes a nightmare." [Nah. PL/SQL packages and the application export script are plain text files. Last time I checked, most version control systems could handle plain text files just fine.]
* "Point and click programming... shudder". [Ah yes, why would I save time by pointing and clicking, instead of spending my time writing reams of "real" code?]
And then there is this guy who complains
"[Apex] is needlessly limited. I am not trying to develop a database app, I am trying to solve a given problem."
And goes on to explain that:
"In my experience, succesfull applications have a tendency to grow in unexpected directions. If you use apex, you have severily limited your ability to grow your application, because it cannot ever become anythin other than a database application. In other words, it might not so much be a problem with apex as a way to develop database applications, as a problem with the very concept of a database application."
It would really help if he gave some examples of the kinds of conceptual problems he fears running into, instead of some vague, unspecified future threat.
Because it turns out that his real problem was rather more prosaic:
"...what we did with apex was not particularily fancy. But we did have major problems with one page that was intended to basically show data from a single table (view actually), in tabular form."
I'm sure someone on the Apex discussion forum could help him out with that one...
In my experience, the vast majority of companies can solve their common business problems with data-centric business applications (a.k.a. "database applications"). And for this type of application, Apex is great. If the customer already has an Oracle database, and you happen to be proficient with SQL and PL/SQL, that makes Apex a perfect tool for you.
Go Apex! :-)
- Morten
A little planning goes a long way - with APEX or any other technology.
- Scott -