Scott Spendolini's Blog

Earlier today, I tweeted the following: After this morning, I don't think I will ever use the "v" function again. #orclapex I wanted to qualify what I meant by that, since sometimes you only see one side of the conversation on Twitter. Also, it's been a while since my last post, so this give me the opportunity to remedy that as well. The APEX "v" function works, and works quite well. For those who have not used it, the "v" function is an APEX-specific function that when you pass an APEX item to it, it will return the value of that item for a specific user session. What's cool about it is that it also works from named PL/SQL program units, as long as they were initiated from an APEX session. Thus, you can write a PL/SQL package that takes in few, if any parameters and still can refer to items that are set in the APEX session state via the "v" function: PROCEDURE foo IS l_customer_name VARCHAR2(255) := v('P1_CUSTOMER_NA...

Not only is the title of this post a great song by one of my all time favorite bands (extra credit if you can name them w/out using Google) but is a question that some of you have been wondering... Most of my time the past few months has been spent on designing & developing sumnevaSERT - a security evaluation tool built in APEX for APEX. sumnevaSERT is the result of working with many customers over the past few years and realizing that they spent very little time reviewing the security of their APEX applications. They all had the same exact reason for neglecting them: no time.  sumnevaSERT makes it blindingly simple to evaluate an APEX application for a number of potential security flaws. It slices through the APEX metadata and produces a single score based on what it finds. You can then drill into any of the categories to see details and advice on how to fix what it finds.  Despite releasing it today, we've already got a list of exciting new features and enhance...

Patrick Cimolini will be conducting a FREE webinar on Tuesday, November 16th at 3:00PM EST entitled "APEX Team Development and Agile Project Management" sponsored by ODTUG. Here's the abstract for the session: The release of Oracle Application Express (APEX) version 4.0 has brought the product to a high level of maturity. This maturity is clearly demonstrated by the addition of the Team Development module. Team Development captures features, to dos, milestones, and bugs. Feedback from all hands-on stakeholders (including end users) is captured by the Feedback feature that can be installed declaratively in one or two minutes. This Webinar briefly describes Team Development and shows how it can be configured to work successfully with an Agile Project Management methodology. If you haven't seen Patrick present at ODTUG before, then you can't miss this!  His knowledge of APEX is only surpassed by the wisdom that he has about project management in general. You can sign...

I saw a Twittersation - or however you say Twitter + Conversation - between Martin D'Souza & Dan Mcghan about a potential new hashtag for Oracle APEX. This, in my opinion, has been a long time coming, since #apex will bring back anything from Oracle APEX to the upcoming APEX show in Las Vegas to Apex, NC to even a tattoo shop. Martin suggested #orapex, which could likely get spelled #oraapex or #orapex, and thus added to the confusion.  Dan then chimed in with #oralcle_apex, which I thought was a spot long and replied with #orclapex. I guess I won, because in the time it took to get my kids to bed, there was a blog post as well as other Tweets in in multiple language, thus further justifying its logic!  And if it's on the Internet in not just one, but TWO places, then is HAS to be true! Thus, while the iron is hot, might I be so bold to propose a new hashtag for Oracle Aces: #orclace.  The current one - #aced - pulls back more high school kids proclaiming victory over a ...

The APEXposed conferences are almost here!  Brussels will kick off first on October 28th and Dallas will follow shortly after that on November 10th & 11th. If you're on the fence about attending, then perhaps this will push you over:  If you sign up with the code APEX, you will get $150 off of the registration fee!  And one of the first ten people to use the code APEX will get a completely free registration! That's only $450 for ODTUG members and $500 for non-members.  Remember - not only will you get to see some of the top APEX experts in the industry, but you can also attend any session in the PL/SQL track - all for one price!  Hope to see you there.

Hate to do this, but I have to turn on comment moderation.  Too many spammers out there, trying to convince me that my blog is the best blog in the world! I'll still approve anything that's legitimate; just want to see if I can get a handle on the noise...

I'm sure that Kris Rice will appreciate the Hockey analogy, as his team has brought not one, not two - but THREE EA releases to market this week with the addition of the APEX Listener EA that was just announced !

On the heels of the Oracle Data Modeler tool, SQL Developer 3.0 EA 1 was just released to the wild.  There's quite a number of new and/or enhanced features - most of which seem to be quite useful.  A complete list of the new features can be found here . My favorite thing so far?  It uses a fixed-width font in the data grids. It's the little things... However - a feature that is noticeably absent is the ability to automatically apply the APEX refactoring results.  It would be nice if that after it generated the corresponding packages, it could replace all of the PL/SQL with the stubs to call each procedure.  That would make refactoring truly useful, especially in environments with a lot of APEX applications that need to be better managed.

Oracle just announced the Early Adopter release of SQL Developer Data Modeler.  You can download it from here:  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/datamodeler/overview/index.html In case you missed it, Oracle is now offering SQL Developer Data Modeler for free, which is a tremendous savings from the original price tag and great for the database developer community. As an added bonus, this release actually comes with an actual icon that when double-clicked, launches the application.  A far cry from having to hand-code your own script. :)

I can't believe that another year has gone by already!  It's time to head out to San Francisco and spend a week with 40,000 other Oracle developers, DBA, managers, vendors and all of the people who work hard behind the scenes to make it all happen! All of the Sumneva folks will be busy this year, too, as we have quite an aggressive presentation schedule.  You can have a look at it here - we did update some of the Unconference times & locations. From the sounds of all of the Oracle Ace Directors , it seems like there will be many interesting announcements over the next few days. And if you will be in San Francisco, don't forget about the APEX meetup on Tuesday evening.

Just posted a new Tip over on sumneva.com that deals with quickly creating a package that can manage all DML transactions against a table or tables. I came across this feature in the days of APEX 4.0 EA1.  I immediately thought that it was a new APEX 4.0 feature - until I checked 3.2, and it was there too.  Basically, this allows you to easily create a table API which can be used to replace the built-in APEX DML processes. Why would you do this? If you wanted to create a more secure architecture, you may want to have a tableless schema - thus, the built in processes will do you little good.  This API can live in a separate schema, and facilitate all DML calls used to manage your data. Since it's in a PL/SQL package, you can easily add additional security or data integrity checks before performing any of the DML transactions - another major reason to consider this approach.

Looks like Mark Hurd's unemployment stint is coming to a close, as it was announced that he would be joining Oracle this past weekend.  He will be replacing Charles Philips, who has since resigned his position.  It seems that Phillips had been looking to leave for some time , but had decided to stay through the Sun acquisition. Sure, there was a lot of controversy surrounding his departure, but even HP itself concluded that it could find no hard evidence of wrongdoing.  And as for the falsified expense reports, I think that Larry Ellison summed it up quite simply when he said that no CEO fills out his own expense reports, so if there was fraud, it was done by someone else. All issues aside, this move seems to put Oracle on a path to go squarely after IBM, as no doubt that Hurd won't be the last ex-HP employee making the switch to Oracle in the next few months.   Hurd's experience in hardware is something that Oracle needed in order to parlay the Sun hardware acquired in the...

Anonymous Pro is a fixed-width font developed specifically for developers by Mark Simonson . Best of all - it's free under the  Open Font License . From it's home page:   "Characters that could be mistaken for one another (O, 0, I, l, 1, etc.) have distinct shapes to make them easier to tell apart in the context of source code." I installed it on my Mac and set SQL Developer's default font to it, and the text is a little crisper than Courier, my previous default. Anyone else have a favorite "coding" font?

Very cool article , outlining some common & simple screen design patterns - for both web and desktop applications.  Be sure to check out the 2010 Update as well. I always tell students in our training classes that they should not try to re-invent the design patterns used in most applications - especially since they are database developers and not graphic designers.  Users have come to expect specific things to be in specific places - login/logout in the upper left/right, a site map of sorts at the bottom of each page, tabs for navigation, etc.  Deviating from that expectation will likely create more confusion than anything else, and should be avoided at all costs.

Jeff Smith offers up some excellent advice for those traveling to OOW 2010. As a more-than-I-can-count-time attendee of OOW, here's a few additions to his list: Don't eat dinner anywhere near Moscone.   Sure, it's easy, especially after a long day or sessions, but most of San Francisco's best restaurants are not adjacent to Moscone.  Head to North Beach or the Marina instead. Attend a session or sessions on something that you have never heard of. You don't know what you don't know... Talk to strangers. As Jeff said, this is one of the best places to network.  If you don't talk, then you may as well catch the sessions online.  No where else will there be as many people with similar technical interests than OOW. Don't jaywalk.  Seriously. The SFPD was giving out jaywalking tickets around Moscone the last couple of years, and I know a couple people who were "lucky" enough to get them.  Not fun. Come early or leave late.   Take a day to explore n...

Spent a few minutes yesterday building my schedule for OOW.  Lots of sessions, and unfortunately, some of the good ones are already booked.  That didn't matter, as there were plenty more to choose from. There's not a whole lot of APEX sessions this year - or at least ones that I have not already seen.  Thus, I'm going to focus more on other database technologies, such as security & performance.  Lots of sessions under that category. My only gripe is that the Schedule Builder UI needs a major overhaul.  First off, you need a 30" monitor just to view all of the content on one screen - especially when you have the Advanced Search option enabled.   Also, I kept getting a "Search Timeout" error when I tried to search for sessions.  The only way to resolve this is to log out and log back in again.  Such basic functionality for a database conference should NEVER break, at least in my opinion... The Schedule Builder also tries to use a lot of Ajax-type controls; ...

As per Patrick Wolf , apex.oracle.com has been upgraded to 4.0.1, fixing all of the known issues listed here . Thus, we can conclude that it won't be long before the 4.0.1 patchset is available to the general public.

This one may be review - and is definitely not a new feature of APEX 4.0 - but it's something that I just stumbled upon.  If you pass in "RIR" to the Clear Cache parameter of an APEX page that contains an Interactive Report, it will programmatically reset the Interactive Report on that page - the same way as if the user selected the Reset option from the IR's menu. Best of all, you can pass both a page and the RIR directive simply by separating them with a comma.  For example, to clear the cache and reset the Interactive Report on page 10, you would pass 10,RIR to the clear cache parameter.

Joel Kallman from the APEX development team has another clearly written & concise article giving us a look at the inner-workings of APEX - specifically how it uses DBMS_SYS_SQL to parse as any schema.

This thread  (language NSFW) on Reddit discusses Oracle's decision to sue Google - and APEX gets some discussion about 2-3 pages down! Unfortunately, most of the comments are just plain wrong.  I understand that people are entitled to their opinions, but when things are misstated, that's another issue entirely.  I think this is proof that most developers - Oracle and non-Oracle - simply don't know what APEX is and what it can & can't do.