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!

Looks like ApEx 2.2 is ready for prime-time. You can download a copy here .

Well, almost. Microsoft has made a version of the popular Firefox extension here . It's still beta, but seems to have not entirely messed up my PC yet. I have found it to be useful, as most of my clients use IE as their preferred browser, thus forcing me to do the same when testing their sites.

Looks like the ApEx PMs have been busy, as the ApEx Home Page has been re-worked. There's not a ton of new content, but I do like the new organization of the page, especially the links to Oracle Magazine articles which feature ApEx. There's also some details on what's new in Release 2.2 , which you could previously only see in an obscure corner of apex.oracle.com. In talking with some of the folks at Oracle, there is a lot more in store, so check back every now and then to see the forthcoming changes.

I learned something about the Internet last night which I did not know before:

I'm excited to announce that Sumner Technologies, LLC in conjunction with ODTUG will be sponsoring a 2 or 3 day ApEx Training Conference sometime in early 2007. This training conference will be held in conjunction with Steven Feuerstein's PL/SQL conference. ( http://oracleplsqlprogramming.com/opp2005.php ) Very few details have been worked out yet - heck, we don't even have a real name! What we do know is that we're targeting sometime in February 2007, most likely in San Francisco. The conference will also have some members of the Oracle ApEx Development team participating. I do not know how much it will cost at this point, either. The format will likely be 1/3 lecture, 2/3 hands-on training. We have not finalized a list of topics yet. Please reply on this OTN Thread and let us know what you'd like to spend some time on - from themes to security, or anything in between. Our thought was to cater to the more advanced users of ApEx, but I'd be interested to see ...

Warning to those easily offended: There's a bad word on the following link. Don't say that I didn't warn you! I stumbled upon this little gem: Time Breakdown of Modern Web Design I thought about a few recent projects, and it's scary how accurate it is!

This photo was taken outside my house, just across the street: I've been told he's been up there for some time now, and when the wind blows down, you get the smell to prove it.

Today was the 1st day of ODTUG where I did something other than speak for 5 minutes or down a couple of beers. I hopped on the Metro from Vienna ( Virginia, not Austria ) and was downtown well before the general sessions started. Unfortunately, I had to miss them, as I needed the time to polish off my presentation for Wednesday, "You can't do THAT with a Browser!" I led a panel of myself and three others (Michael Snyder & Greg Jarmiolowski from CASETech, and Patrick Cimolini from the Cayman Islands Government) on Application Express. We played to a room of about 40 or so people, and took questions right until the end. Perhaps Patrick's experiences with ApEx were the most impressive. From seeing a couple of my presentations last year, he was able to take the idea of using ApEx back to the Caymans, train his staff, and deploy 3-4 production applications in well under a year's time frame - all with no previous Oracle experience! There were some other great...

The Oracle Development Tools Users Group (ODTUG) just went live with their new site, just about a week before their 2006 Conference . The new site is, of course, running on Oracle Application Express, and is one of my first Internet deployed sites. Over 1,500 documents (presentations, white papers & technical journal articles) are indexed by Oracle Text and available to Full ODTUG Members on the site. Associate Membership is free, and will give you access to a limited number of these documents. The content of the site is managed by the ODTUG folks via a separate ApEx application. This way, they can make changes at any time, and do not require any access to the ApEx development environment. Everything from managing the Banner Ads to adding & managing content is done via this Administrative Console. Check it out and hopefully I'll see some of you at the conference next week!

If you know a thing or two about Football - and by Football, I really mean Soccer - you can win a free year of ApEx hosting, thanks to John Scott of Shellprompt . Dimitri Gielis has put together quite an impressive World Cup 2006 "bracket" application , hosted by Shellprompt. All you need to do is sign up (it's free), enter your picks (no money is exchanged), and go cheer on your favorite team! Drinking a pint of beer from the team's home countries during the match is optional. XM is broadcasting all of the games this year, in both English and Spanish, so I'll be sure to tune in now and then.

No, not anohter baby - one is more than enough! A few weeks ago, Sumner Technologies welcomed Josh Millinger as employee #2. Josh also comes from Oracle, where he was for over 10 years prior to leaving. During his tenure there, Josh was responsible for managing the Oracle Partner Technology Center (now called the Oracle Enterprise Technology Center) in Reston, VA. I have known Josh personally since the 1st day I moved to the Washington, DC area, and am thrilled that he has decided to jump the ship and take the plunge into the world of small business with me.

I was writing an installation script today, and wanted to have a large banner displaying the product name as part of it. I fondly remember the UNIX banner command, where you could type " banner sumner " and get something like this: ###### ## ## ## ## ## ## ######## ######## ## ## ## ## ### ### ### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #### #### #### ## ## ## ## ###### ## ## ## ### ## ## ## ## ###### ######## ## ## ## ## ## ## #### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ### ## ## ## ###### ####### ## ## ## ## ######## ## ## So I SSH'ed into a Linux machine to try to get the same result quickly & easily. No dice! Not to be deterred, I hit up Google and got this link: http://www.network-science.de/ascii/ Not only can I generate a banner as I did above, but you can get all kinds of fancy, like this: ___ _ _ _ __ ___ _ __ ___ _ __ / __| | | | '_ ` _ \| '_ \ / _ \ ...

My article, " Building an Ajax Memory Tree " has finally been published on OTN. It was also picked up by Ajaxian today, and got decent reviews there! In this article, I discuss how you can use ApEx & Ajax to create a new type of Tree. This Ajax-based tree is more lightweight than the built-in ApEx tree. You can also search for a node in my version, and have the Tree automatically expand to that node - something which the built-in ApEx Tree cannot do. To give credit where credit is due, the basis for the Tree which I create in the article is based on Carl Backstrom's Ajax-based tree .

Looks like the ApEx folks have an Evaluation Version of ApEx 2.2. Just got my credentials and was able to sign on. At first glance, you will notice that the Application Builder pages have been given a face-lift: There are also some new icons next to the "Run" icon for Comments, Page Locks, Export the Page, and Search. Three new Themes have made it into Release 2.2: Blue Gray, Dark Blue, & Modern. I'm a fan of Blue Gray, but could take of leave the other two. One of my favorite new features has to be the way report columns are re-ordered. Prior to Release 2.2, each time you wanted to move a column up or down, you had to submit the page. Now, thanks to some DHTML, you can easily and quickly move columns up and down. This alone will save me time on my use of the tool. On that same page, each section has been moved to a DHTML "hide & show" region - no more scrolling to the lower depths of the page to set up CSV export! This approach was also impleme...

On Wednesday, April 27th, we welcomed Isabella Lillian Spendolini into the world. She was 7 lbs 7 oz and 20". Both mom and little Izzy are doing well. All three of us have been trying to get some rest this week. Fortunately, Grandma is in town and has taken over pretty much all day to day tasks.

There is now an ApEx project on SourceForge.net. There is also a Project Home Page, hosted on apex.oracle.com here . According to the site, the goal of the project is to "facilitate development of Oracle Application Express (APEX) applications until they gain enough momentum of their own to become their own separate projects." Some of the initial projects include a Forum, Wiki, Blog, and AskSomeone, which if you can't tell, is based on AskTom.oracle.com. This move represents another step in the maturity of ApEx as a development environment. As this project grows, more "cookie cutter" applications will be available for common tasks, making it even easier and quicker to deploy ApEx applications.