Scott Spendolini's Blog

I've been invited to speak at the Mid-Atlantic Oracle Professionals user group's Brown Bag Lunch series. The presentation, You Can't do THAT with a Browser - Part II - is a continuation of addressing how to incorporate 3rd party tools and other non-traditional technologies with APEX. The original presentation can be downloaded from ODTUG.com here . The presentation is set for 28-FEB-2008 at noon at the offices of BBN Technologies in Arlington, Virginia - just a stone's throw from where I lived for the better part of 6 years or so. There is no charge, but you will need to register , and space is limited. I hope to see some of you who live in the DC area there!

Yes, it's that time of year, when legions of IT professionals and graphic designers alike skip lunch to sit in front of a browser and rapidly click "refresh" for the better part of an hour and a half.   MacWorld is upon us! Apple really does a good job of creating a buzz .  They are well aware that people will start watching the Moscone Center at least a week before the show for any banner , sign, or shipping container with a Cupertino, CA address on it.  This year, of course, it's the "There's something in the air" banner, which has led to a number of predictions from WiMax-enabled MacBooks to the new ultra-portable that has been unanimously coined the MacBook Air. I'll admit, it is fun to join in on the speculation - at least in moderation.  I suppose there's some element of pride to be had if you're right, as that would put your thought process on par with that of Steve Jobs' - if only for a moment.  However, there is one concern with...

Introducing Owen Price Spendolini!  Owen made his debut on Tuesday, November 20th at 10:37AM - just in time for Thanksgiving.  Mom was induced around 8:30AM, and Owen wasted no time in getting out!  He weighed in at 8 lbs. 9 oz. and 21 1/2", and already looks like a mini-linebacker! Isabella has adjusted quite well to him, giving him a hug and kiss before trying to poke out his eye.  Here's a picture of the happy big sister with Owen: I've already realized that changing the diaper of a boy is much more complex than that of a girl! :)

I came across an interesting article this morning on Ajaxian:   Ajax, Browsers, Running Out of Time .  The crux of the article is that the author's PC consistently gets bogged down if he leaves Ajax-heavy applications - such as Google Mail, Zimbra & Yahoo Mail - up for most of the day.   I can understand his pain, as i have noticed similar behavior with the new Yahoo Mail.  Sure, it's much "cooler" and easier to use than the "classic" version, but it comes with a cost. This is why I am still very cautious and conservative when using Ajax components in APEX applications.  It's still too easy to create code that just doesn't play nice with browsers.  It's also 100% impossible to discern what else a browser is running when your Ajax component is fired up, which makes it all the more difficult to ensure that your code doesn't step on someone else's. For better or worse, perception is reality.  If large-scale Ajax applications that the mas...

In the midst of all of the OOW blogs, I hope this one makes it through!  I didn't make it to OOW as we're expecting our second child any day, hour or minute now, and being clear across the country would not have been the best idea that I've come up with... In any case, I'm pleased to announce that Sumner Technologies, LLC has scheduled its first public training session.  It will be held from January 28th through January 30th, 2008 in Ashburn, Virginia.  The course will be Introduction to APEX 3.0, which is designed to provide an extensive overview of APEX using mostly hands-on exercises. More details can be found here: http://sumnertechnologies.com/pls/htmldb/f?p=10000:300

As I was about to call it a night, I noticed that Leopard had automatically created an icon for "oracle's remote desktop" in the Finder.  Double-clicking on it yielded nothing, so I almost just gave up and went to bed.  I figured that I'd check the console of my Windows box just in case it was asking for something.   Turns out that the icon is a link to start a VNC session with the Linux VM running on that Windows box.  Tweaking the VNC server settings just a spot to allow access without a prompt was all I needed to do.  Next time I double-clicked on it, a new window containing the desktop of my Oracle Enterprise Linux VM appeared: Sure, you can go and configure all of this manually, but it's nice to see this type of "techie" tool seamlessly bundled into a product that is also aimed at complete tech novices.

I received my copy of Leopard today, and promptly installed it.  Aside from having to dig up some serial numbers, it went off without much hassle. While most of the media is focusing on features such as Time Machine, Spaces and the new UI, I found one lesser-known one that is sure to put a smile on any Mac user's face. Not only did Leopard seek out and find potential Windows shares, it has a very, shall I say, "appropriate icon" to represent them:

At least it's supposed to. As Pete Finnegan points out , the Alpha release of Red Database Security's checkpwd has a new feature which attempts to crack APEX passwords. I downloaded and installed it, and got the same ORA-12154 error that Pete did. Bypassing the TNSNAMES.ora file seemed to do the trick, and checkpwd was able to run against a local APEX 3.0 instance of Oracle XE. However, based on these results: I get the feeling that the APEX portion is not quite working... I will cut them some slack, as this is after all an Alpha release. As far as I know, this is the first tool of its kind for APEX passwords. It's definitely a good thing, as the only way weak passwords can be fixed is if they can be identified. I look forward to seeing more stable and complete releases of this useful tool. - Scott -

Oracle's Critical Patch Update for October was just released, and it looks like APEX has no known vulnerabilities! Oracle HTTP server also made the list of unaffected products. Of course this doesn't mean that any APEX application developed will be 100% secure, but it is nice to know that at least the overall framework of APEX is quite secure, making an excellent platform to develop on... :) - Scott -

When I was at Oracle, there was a big push to use Oracle software for everything and anything we did. It was commonly referred to as "eating your own dog food", which is just gross. As nasty as that may sound, the concept did make a lot of sense: if Oracle built software products that were supposed to be so good, then why were they not being used internally? And even better - if the products didn't live up to their promises, then we had no one to blame but ourselves, and we could actually fix the issues. I've decided to adopt that concept of eating my own, er, well, showcasing the product which we specialize in. Starting today, I'm happy to announce that sumnertech.com is now running on APEX! Why did it take so long? Two years ago, when I started Sumner Technologies, I didn't have a lot of time or resources to set up my own instance of APEX to host my web site on. Thus, I took the path of least resistance: static HTML. Also, time was (and still is) s...

Recently, I spoke with Jeff Erickson, senior editor of Oracle Magazine, about the benefits of APEX 3.0. The interview highlights some of the key benefits of APEX for all sizes of businesses, with a focus on SMBs. I'm sure to get some flack about my comment on who spoke English first; us of those from the UK. :) You can listen to the Podcast - which is about 10 minutes - here .

I came across this link this morning, which looks like it holds a wealth of hints for using and optimizing JavaScript. Some of the things it mentions, such as compressing JavaScript, may make it a bit more difficult to debug your code. Other things, such as putting your JavaScript libraries at the end of the page, are no-brainers and can easily be implemented in APEX with little risk of breaking anything. Finally, the article mentions using GZIP to compress all HTTP traffic , which will in turn make your site load faster. apex.oracle.com has been using this trick for as long as I can remember. It only takes a few minutes to configure and will increase the performance of almost any site - static or dynamic.

Apple updated the iPhone to 1.1.1 today. While most of the buzz is around the new iTunes Store, there is a small new feature that makes all the sense in the world: double-tapping the space bar will insert a "." followed by a space. So simple, yet so brilliant. This is a classic example of taking a use case - a user wants to compose a message - watching users actually do that - and then improving upon it. Previous to this release, they would have to type a sentence, and then tap the ".?123" key to then have to type a period, then switch back. Three taps plus one more for the trailing space just for a period. With the 1.1.1 update, all a user needs to do is hit space two times, an a period followed by a trailing space instantly appear. How does this relate to APEX? Simple - once you design an application, you're not done. There are several improvements still to be made, none of which you will be able to identify. Watch your users use your application. You...

Next week, I will be presenting at the Virginia Oracle Users Group conference in Charlottesville, VA. It's a much smaller conference than the ODTUGs & IOUGs of the world, but that makes it better in some sense, as you get a better chance to meet and talk to people. I'm going to present an Intro to APEX (The ABCs of APEX) presentation, in favor or something more advanced, as there are no other APEX presentations on the agenda. If you plan on attending, look for me on Thurday afternoon and possibly at the reception.

First of off, consider my recent absence a summer vacation of sorts, without the vacation part. It's been hectic since my last post, which was about, wow - ODTUG. We had over 100 people in our training sessions there, and most of the feedback was great! We hope to do it again next year, if not sooner. The reason for my absence was largely due to the fact that we recently moved, and pretty much everything that you can think of and then some, went horribly awry. In any case, I was recently asked how to make an entire row in a report "clickable", so that when anywhere in a row is clicked, the user will be taken to a form to edit that record. In order to achieve this, you need to create a new Named Column Report Template. This means that you will have to define each column that you want to have manually in the template itself. Hardly a scalable solution, but it's not too difficult to implement and expand on. I am only going to use one Row Template to keep things s...

Well, we're all off to ODTUG this weekend in Daytona. We're put together what I think is a solid Advanced Track of APEX training , as well as our standard, proven Beginner material.  From what the folks at ODTUG are telling me, we're going to be playing host to a sold out crowd! I look forward to putting some names with faces at the APEX Meetup , as well as the various other events scheduled for next week. Safe travels everyone!

No, this is not some post about how we should all just get along... I've been a Parallels user since day 1 of owning a Mac, more or less. I've tried the nw VMWare Fusion Beta, and although it seemed to work OK, I had no real reason to switch. Until perhaps now. Unity is VMWare's answer to Coherence - the technology which Parallels employs to display a PC window as if it were a Mac window. However, Unity takes it up a notch or two. It also works with odd-shaped windows, such as Windows Media Player. You can use Expose and have all of your PC windows behave just like Mac ones. There is direct access to the Start bar from the Mac OS X menu. And my favorite - you can permanently dock a PC application in the Mac toolbar! I'll be interested to see how this all plays out, as I suspect some sort of announcement will be coming at WWDC next week.

In keeping with their promise, Apple has finally announced the availability date of the iPhone - June 29th. Yes, there are a full 28 other days which are both also in June and earlier than June 29th, but at least it's not June 30th... I watched the new ads this morning to catch a glimpse of what will hopefully soon be mine. Unfortunately for me, my Q was nearby, and saw the glean in my eye as I was watching them. Out of a combination of jealously and fear, it promptly froze - which I'll admit it had not done in a good solid week. Upon trying to revive it the traditional way, it quietly refused. Three or four attempts later, it finally relented and re-booted itself with one small difference - every last bit of my data was gone. Fortunately, I keep everything synced on my Mac, so nothing except for the list of recent calls was truly lost. Your time is limited, Q...

Lewis Cunningham @ IT Toolbox has posted a new podcast, where he interviews Oracle APEX Product Manager David Peake and Peter Martin from RL Polk & Co . The overall focus of the podcast is how APEX has provided a variety of customers with a tool which is not only fast & easy to use, but also scales up to meet enterprise-class requirements. APEX is also compared to other RAD development environments, such as PHP & Ruby on Rails. Peter also did a perfect job in pronouncing my last name - a feat which most telemarketers struggle with. You can listen to the podcast here .

Seems like AppsHosting is just getting started, as they contacted me to state that some of the information on their site was inaccurate. Some corrections as to the information in my previous post: - You DO get a private workspace with 250MB of space - a significant increase from the 5 or so that Oracle gives out and secure and isolated from any other developers. - You DO NOT need an Oracle CSI with their paid plan. The $199/month price does include the license fees to use Oracle. In speaking with them, they also said that SQL*Plus access is a very real possibility, even with the free accounts. Something to keep an eye on, to say the least!