Scott Spendolini's Blog

Mike Hichwa & Company's APEX 4.0 Presentation from ODTUG was recorded and can now be viewed here . Definitely worth the watch, even if you were there to see it live.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but it seems that blogging has taken a sharp nose dive in terms of frequency. I monitor a bunch of Oracle-related and other blogs, and the traffic is definitely down. There were also few blog re-caps of ODTUG - which is in stark contrast to years past, where the coverage has been extensive. The few blogs that were updated were brief and light on real content. So, the question must be asked: is blogging a thing of the past? First of all, maintaining a blog is not easy. You have to select a topic that you want to blog about, hoping that it is of interest to not just you but your readers. Then, you may have to do some research on that topic, maybe create an example if its a technical blog, and then find the time to actually compose your thoughts. Sounds too much like school to me! Using Twitter is easy. Many of the people that I follow "re-tweet" other people's Tweets that they find interesting. To translate for the non-Tweeters out th...

It's truly amazing what is going on in Iran. In the span of a little less than a week, our public perception of the Iranians has done one huge 180. No longer do we think that they all hunkered down in some mosque planning the next attack on America or hacking into our computers trying to steal nuclear secrets of burning American flags and effigies of our leaders. All of a sudden, they look very different to us. We can relate to them better today that we could last week. They are simply standing up for themselves, trying to point out to the world that, "Hey, we're not all bad people - there's just a few at the top that are making things, well, difficult for us." And during this crisis, a seemingly unlikely ally has rushed to their side - the global digital community. Since their government has imposed a virtual media and Internet blackout, the only way to get news out is via the Internet, specifically social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. What w...

If you purchase a fair amount of office supplies, then make sure that you sign up for the Worklife Rewards program at Office Depot.  You get a quarterly gift card based on the amount that you spend, among other benefits - one of which I just found out about this weekend:  If you bring back a spent ink cartridge, you will get a $3 bonus reward added to your account.  Details are here:   http://www.myworkliferewards.com/loyalty/smartView.do?code=InkDepot Not only is it good for the environment - especially since HP stopped putting the free recycle envelopes in their packaging in favor of their useless promotions - but it can put some cash back in your pocket, which you'll likely just spend on more ink anyways...

The last few weeks have been quite hectic indeed! In addition to my day job, I've been busy working with Doug Gault - Sumner's newest member - in re-structuring a number of our services and training classes.  I'm also happy to announce a couple of new products that we will be launching soon. SumnerPrint is a PL/SQL-based solution that allows you to easily print APEX reports to PDF, HTML and XLS.  Built on top of PL/PDF, SumnerPrint easily integrates into any APEX application and allows your end users to print high fidelity reports with the click of the mouse.  Since it's built on PL/PDF, there is no middle tier to configure or extra servers to purchase.  You can be up and running with it in just a few minutes! SumnerFramework is a set of APEX applications and tables that allow you to manage who has access to which APEX application.  It also provides a single point of management, so that you can centralize your role management for easier access and better ...

Notice: June 2nd is the last day that you'll save $200 on the ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 registration. With over 50 APEX presentations and 2 full APEX tracks this year, there has never been a single conference that has encompassed so much APEX content! And since ODTUG is a fraction of the size of other conferences, you always get the opportunity to meet with the presenters later on to ask follow up questions or just to comment on their presentations. This is probably one of the largest benefits that ODTUG offers over other conferences, in my opinion. So if you're already signed up, I'll see you there. If you're still considering, make sure to book your trip before June 2nd to save an additional $200!

Lots of good insight in this short article: http://bokardo.com/archives/everyday-app/ It's interesting that across the world, the number of sites that we use on a daily basis is relatively small and consistent. I can attest to this, as I fit pretty much in the 7-8 range. Quite often when designing a site for use on the public Internet, we obsess over all of the little details that take up the majority of the development cycle. This evidence suggests that we should do otherwise. Think about the relationships we have with brick & mortar stores - we probably also have just a few that we frequent on a regular basis - grocery store, gas station, dry cleaners, bank, etc. All of these stores are designed with efficiency in mind. They want you - the customer - to get in, get what you need, and then get out as quickly as possible: grocery stores now have self checkouts; banks have drive-throughs and ATMs; gas stations let you pay at the pump, and so on. Stores that we only visit on...

I just ran into a situation where I needed to pass back a value from a pop-up page to a tabular form item in the calling page. While I've done this in the past ny manually writing all of the JavaScript, I thought that I'd take a look at the new documented APEX JavaScript APIs. I came across this function in the APEX 3.2 API Reference Guide (Part #E13369-01): $v_PopupReturn(pValue, pThat) Sets the value of the item in the parent window (pThat), with (pValue) and then closes the popup window. Return Value Not applicable. Parameters pValue (string) pThat (DOM node | string ID) Looks perfect!  In addition to passing the value back, it will also close the pop-up page, even though that is not documented. On the pop-up page, I created a link with an Optional Redirect to URL, and put the following in the link: javascript:$v_PopupReturn(#EMPNO#, '&P3_NODE.') P3_NODE is the DOM ID of the tabular form item that I wanted to return the value to.  You'll need to...

After two days of consistent use, APEX on OS X has performed flawlessly! And it's fast - REALLY fast! Sure, there's no network there to slow things down, but when using Safari 4, it's just as fast as static pages! Now that Oracle runs natively on OS X, I can stop relying on VMs for that service, and use SQL Developer, Firefox and other Mac tools for 100% of my development. I just hope that the folks at Oracle make this a supported configuration at some point so that we don't have to keep running in an unsupported fashion.

It seems as if the Embedded PL/SQL Gateway is a part of Oracle 10g for Mac OS X after all. Thus, if there's an EPG, then there's a way to get APEX up and running. Alex Gorbachev has posted a step-by-step guide on how to do just this here . And if you missed his Installation Guide for Oracle 10g on Mac OS X, you can find that here . As he stated, the workaround is not a very secure thing to do; however, if you're just using it for local development, there should be no major issues. You have been warned. In any case, I did have an issue with the code that he had posted to disable the security on XDB. After some searching around, I used the following instead: DECLARE configxml SYS.XMLType; configxml2 SYS.XMLType; BEGIN -- Get the current configuration configxml := DBMS_XDB.cfg_get(); -- Modify the configuration SELECT INSERTCHILDXML (xdburitype( '/xdbconfig.xml').getXML(), '/xdbconfig/sysconfig/protocolconfig/httpconfig', 'allow-repository-anonymous-a...

The Oracle APEX team has released a new video that really does a good job covering how you can position APEX.  It's more of an animation than a video, but the visuals really do a nice job complementing the concepts that they are trying to get across. Have a look at it on the APEX OTN Site .

No, this is not another rant about just anyone who doesn't know how to read manuals.  It's about me.  And I don't know how to read manuals. After downloading Oracle 10g for Mac OS X, I spent some time getting it installed.  After a false start (where I created the dba group with GUID 201 - the same as the Guest account on Mac OS X), I managed to get it up and running.  There's an excellent guide here, which walks you through just what you need to do and little more:  http://blog.rayapps.com/2009/04/12/how-to-install-oracle-database-10g-on-mac-os-x-intel Once I could SQL*Plus into the database, I downloaded the Companion CD, and started to install that, thinking that the Oracle HTTP Server would be a part of it.  Well, much to my disappointment, it was nowhere to be found.  After some digging on the OTN Apple Forum, I came across this post:  http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=654233&tstart=0&start=15 The important li...

After many false starts, it looks like Oracle has finally released the Oracle Database 10g & the Companion CD for Mac OS X Intel!  Sure, it's not Oracle 11g, but I'll take what I can get... Of course, I am going to get APEX up and running on it as soon as I can, and will report my findings.  You can download it from OTN here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/oracle10g/htdocs/10204macsoft_x86-64.html

No, I'm not writing stimulus checks, nor did I win the lottery. However, if you're going to ODTUG Kaleidoscope this year, you can save a quick $200 by registering before April 7th! There's going to be two separate APEX tracks this year, in addition to the Sunday Symposium. There's just no other place that you can go to get this much APEX information for even close to the same price! Have a look at the agenda and hope to see you in Monterey!

Oracle has announced the general availability of Oracle APEX 3.2.  In addition, they have re-vamped the APEX home page ( http://apex.oracle.com ) with a cleaner look than the previous version. There seems to be a number of security features in addition to the Forms Conversion features that have been discussed for some time.

Just got an e-mail from Joel Kallman with details of the memorial service for Carl, as well as the fund set up in his name: Please join the family in celebrating the life of Carl Backstrom on Thursday, the sixth of November two thousand and eight at one o'clock in the afternoon Orange Terrace Park 20010 Orange Terrace Park Parkway Riverside, CA 92508 In lieu of flowers the family has set up a Memorial Fund in behalf of Carl's daughter, Destany. Donations to Carl's Memorial Fund can be made several ways: Domestic wire transfers Account Number 152460903 Citibank ABA Number 322271724 International wire transfers SWIFT Code: CITI US 33 Checks Make payable to Susan Bailey (Carl's Mother) Address: 3395 S. Jones Blvd #403 Las Vegas, NV 89146 “And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” - Abraham Lincoln

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!

In case you missed it, the book that I contributed to - Pro Oracle Application Express - has finally shipped! According to the Oracle Bookstore at OpenWorld, it was the hottest book there, at least according to this site:  http://blogs.oracle.com/databaseinsider/2008/09/database_books_top_sellers_at.html So if you were one of the many who pre-ordered it, you should have it by now and I personally thank you for your patience!  I hope that you get out of it as much as we (especially John) have put into it!