Scott Spendolini's Blog

Steven Feuerstein ( https://twitter.com/stevefeuerstein ) just tweeted this: Improve your programming with a daily regimen of situps (or anything you can do to strengthen abs), walks in the woods, and lots of water. — Steven Feuerstein (@stevefeuerstein) July 14, 2014 Which in turn, inspired me to quickly write this post. The combination of being in IT and working from home leads to lots of hours logged in some sort of chair, whether its in my home office, at a customer site or a coffee shop.  You don't need to be a doctor to realize that this is not particularly healthy behavior. So for the past few months, I've incorporated something new into my daily routine: taking a walk.  It doesn't sound like much, and quite honestly, it really isn't.  But, I wish that I had started this years ago, because the benefits of it are huge. First of all, it's nice to get outside during the day, especially when it's actually nice out.  Nothing can quite compare to i...

The next Meetup for the ORCLAPEX NOVA Meetup Group will be this Thursday, July 17th at 7:00PM at Oracle Reston.  (Details:  http://www.meetup.com/orclapex-NOVA/events/192592582/ ) We're going to try the "Open Mic" format that has been wildly successful at KScope for the past few years.  The rules are quite simple: anyone can demonstrate their APEX-based solution for up to 10 minutes.  No need to reserve a spot or spend too much time planning.  And as always, no slides will be permitted - strictly demo. Anyone and everyone is welcome to present - even if you have never presented before.  We're a welcoming group, so please don't be shy nor feel intimidated!  I've actually seen quite an amazing selection of APEX-based solutions at prior open mic nights from people who have never presented before, so I encourage everyone to give it a try. While there is WiFi available at Oracle, it's always best to have a local copy of your demonstration, just in cas...

For the upcoming inaugural ORCLAPEX NOVA MeetUp on May 29th , not only will we have Mike Hichwa , Shakeeb Rahman and David Gale from the Reston-based Oracle APEX development team present, but we will also have the entire Columbus, OH based APEX team in attendance, as well: both Joel Kallman and Jason Straub will be in town and have RSVP’ed to the MeetUp! Outside of major conferences such as KScope or OpenWorld, there is no other public forum that will have the same level of APEX expertise from the team that develops the product present!  So what are you waiting for?  Join the rest of us who have already RSVP’ed to this event, as it’s 100% free, and you’re sure to learn a bunch about APEX 5.0 and other exciting happenings in the Database Development world at Oracle. Note: you have to be a member of MeetUp (which is free to join) and RSVP to the event to attend (which is also free), as a list of people needs to be provided to Oracle the day before the event occurs.

Overview Recently, I was working with one of our customers and ran into a rather unique requirement and an uncommon constraint. The customer - Storm Petrel  - has designed a grant management system called Tempest.  This system is designed to aid local municipalities when applying for FEMA grants after a natural disaster occurs.  As one can imagine, there is a lot of old fashioned paperwork when it comes to managing such a thing. Thus, the requirement called for the ability to upload and store scanned documents.  No OCR or anything like that, but rather invoices and receipts so that a paper trail of the work done and associated billing activity can be preserved.  For APEX, this can be achieved without breaking a sweat, as the declarative BLOB feature can easily upload a file and store it in a BLOB column of a table, complete with filename and MIME type. However, the tablespace storage costs from the hosting company for the anticipated volume of documents was considerable.  So much so...

Following in the footsteps of a few others, I’m happy to announce the formation and initial meeting of the ORCLAPEX NOVA (Northern Virginia) group !   As  Dan McGhan  and Doug Gault have mentioned in their blogs, a bunch of us who are regular APEX users are trying to continue to grow the community by providing in-person meetings where we can meet other APEX developers and trade stories, tips and anything else.  Each of the groups is independently run by the local organizers, so the formats and topics will vary from group to group, but the core content will always be focused around Oracle APEX. Groups will also be vendor-neutral, meaning that the core purpose of the group is to provide education and facilitate the sharing of APEX-related ideas, not to market services of products. Right now, there are a number of groups already formed across the world:  ORCLAPEX-MSP  for the Minneapolis, St. Paul area led by  Jorge Rimblas ORCLAPEX-DFW  for the Dallas/Fort Worth area led by  Doug G...

On Thursday, February 27th Thursday, March 6th, I will be taking over @WorkingOrange - the Syracuse University Career Services Twitter account. WorkingOrange was created to allow Syracuse alumni from all fields to share what it is they do on a typical day, as well as interact with students, other alumni and anyone else.  It is typically active each Tuesday and Thursday, and has hosted alumni from all kinds of industries.  For example, today is an elementary school teacher, and this past Tuesday was a producer for a TV station in Philadelphia. I encourage everyone to follow along here: http://www.twitter.com/workingorange or just follow @WorkingOrange  More information on SU's Career Services can be found here:  http://careerservices.syr.edu UPDATE: due to a scheduling issue, I've been reassigned to Thursday, March 6th.

It’s that time of year again: Conference Season!  There’s a few conferences that fall in the 1st few months of the year that I try to present at each year, and this year is no different.  Here’s where I’ll be presenting at over the next few months: RMOUG - Denver, CO - February 5th - 7th At RMOUG this year, I’ll be co-presenting a new session called “Creating a Business UI in APEX” with Jorge Rimblas.  I’m very excited about this session, as there is a lot of practical and easy to use information packed into it about user interface design - something most APEX developers have little experience in.  I’ll also be a part of the Oracle ACE Lunch & Learn on Friday, so if you want to talk APEX, come and find my table. UTOUG - Sandy, UT - March 12th & 13th This year at UTOUG, I will be presenting “Intro to APEX Security”.  Given that APEX 5.0 is out in at least an EA release, I hope to incorporate what’s new in addition to what APEX 4.2 and prior have to offer. GLOC - Cleveland,...

Yesterday, we launched the new APEX Resource Center - or ARC - on enkitec.com.  The ARC was designed to provide the APEX experts at Enkitec with an easy way to share all things APEX with the community.  It’s split up into a number of different sections, each of which I’ll describe here: What's New The first page of the ARC will display content from all other sections, sorted by date from newest to oldest.  Thus, if you want to see what’s new, simply visit this page and have a look.  In the future, we’ll provide a way to be notified anytime anything new is added to any section.   Demonstrations The Demonstrations section is perhaps the most interesting.  Here, our consultants have put together a number of mini-demonstrations using APEX and a number of other associated technologies.  Each demonstration has a working demo, as well as the steps used to create it.  Our plan is to keep adding new demonstrations on a weekly basis.   Events The Events section is a copy of the Events c...

Yesterday, I was part of the KScope 14 APEX Abstract Review call.  This call is used to discuss the rankings that the Abstract Review Committee has previously given each session.  Naturally, we use APEX to help with this process - specifically WebSheets.  The call allows us to ensure that the selections are as fair as possible.  We make sure that no single presenter has too many slots, ensure that there are enough first-timers vs. veteran presenters and keep the topics of the accepted abstracts balanced.  This process has been extremely useful in the past, and really makes for a much better conference. In reviewing the abstracts, I could not help but keep mentally creating a do's and don't list when it comes time to submit an abstract.  While most of them were fairly decent, there were a few that were sub-par in relation to the others, and there were a couple that stood out. Based on this, I've come up with an ad-hoc list of things to consider when submitting an abstrac...

My OCD was delighted this morning when I came across a new feature of SQL Developer: Connection Color.  Brace yourselves, as this feature ain't much, but could have a huge impact on reducing accidental commands in the wrong schema or server. To use it, simply create or edit a database connection, and set the Connection Color to whichever color you choose: Once set, any and all windows associated with that connection will be outlined in that color.  That's it!  I already gleefully went through my connection list and associated different colors with different types of connections.  For example, our development schemas got green: While our production schemas got red: Now, no matter what type of object I am editing, I will instantly know which schema it belongs to based on the color of the border.  Simple AND effective!

APEX 4.2.3 seems to be largely a maintenance release, with few new features added.  (Full details of what is included can be read here:  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/apex/application-express/apex-423-patch-set-notes-2015119.html ) Despite this fact, there are a couple of new "features" that were added by way of a new packaged applications called Sample Reporting and Data Reporter.  Let's take a look at Sample Reporting first.  Upon initial inspection, this application seems quite unremarkable and basic, as it simply contains a few IRs and standard reports.  However, after a closer look, it is obvious that there is more to this than what is on the surface. Upon running the Sample Reporting application, you'll see the following main five options: The first two - Interactive Report & Standard Report are nothing more than their titles imply, and I won't spend any more time discussing them in this post.  The last three, however,...

I found a great blog post by Tom Petrus that summarizes the power of the APEX tree here:  http://tpetrus.blogspot.be/2013/01/working-with-tree-in-apex.html The post details a number of different attributes of the tree and how to interact with it.  It starts simple and shows how to get a tree reference and gradually gets more and more detailed, including how to search the tree and how to handle when a node is selected or even double clicked. There's a working demonstration that goes with the post here:  http://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=54687:LOGIN Many of the techniques and tips here have been invaluable to me in recent days as I work on a new project that heavily involves using trees.  Thanks, Tom!

Looks like the Oracle APEX team's annual OOW site is live here:   http://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=67165:1   This site provides a list of APEX-related sessions at OOW in both a calendar and list view. It is also mobile friendly, which will make it nice to have while at the conference itself. But the big news is spelled out right on the home page: The Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Application Express Developer Challenge Oracle Open World 2013 is designed to highlight how quick and easy it is to build a "mobile" solution using Oracle Application Express. Prizes include Amazon Gift Cards for first, second, and third.  Participants will be required to build mobile pages (an application) utilizing Oracle Application Express in a free hosted development environment, http://apex.oracle.com. When entering the challenge participants must provide a workspace on http://apex.oracle.com. At the completion of the challenge period, the participants will be locked out of the ...

I remember vividly meeting with Jonathan Gennick at RMOUG 2012 at the Apress booth.  As always, he asked if I was up for writing something APEX-related.  And as always, I politely declined, as I just had too much going on at the time.  However, before he let me leave the booth, he pledged that I didn't have to write something that was 800+ pages, and that a niche topic book that was "only" a couple hundred pages would work.  Time to reconsider. Fast forward a year and change later, and finally, I'm happy to announce that  Expert Oracle Application Express Security is now available for purchase (well, it has been for a while, and I'm just now getting around to posting this).  The book really did not take an entire year to write, but there were a couple of challenges that were thrown in along the way.  First of all, that night, we sat down with Enkitec and began discussion the acquisition plans.  So that was a bit of a distraction.  Also, I...

I had the opportunity to sit through two APEX 5.0 presentations yesterday at APEXposed in Montreal - one by Joel Kallman, and the other by David Peake. By far, the most anticipated feature is the new page layout UI.  This interface is designed to do two things: make arranging regions and items easier, and allowing for batch updating of common item attributes.  While the demonstrations were a bit rough and the UI is clearly not finished, this direction represents a lot of promise for APEX developers, as it is the one area that APEX has been lacking since day one. Speaking of interfaces, there will be a new User Interface - Tablet - added to all applications.  This will help bridge the gap between Desktop and Phone-based browsers, should a developer feel the need to do so. One of the smaller yet more impressive features was the ability to add CSS/JS files as a ZIP files.  The APEX listener will automatically unzip those files and even cooler - preserve the paths....

Wow, it's been almost a year since I've blogged.  Guess that's what happens when you get busy! In any case, if you're going to be at OpenWorld and use APEX, be sure to stop by and see the ODTUG APEX Symposium.  This year, we're going to focus on printing with APEX.  We have four different solutions lined up: PL/PDF, BI Publisher, Jasper Reports and the APEX Listener w/FOP.  Each presenter will be discussing the benefits of each solution from a cost, ease of use, integration and security perspective.  This will give the attendees an objective review of these printing solutions.  We'll conclude with a panel discussion summarizing all of the solutions together. Here's the session details so that you can add it to your OpenWorld agendas: Printing Options for Oracle Application Express: Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher [UGF10238] Sunday, Sep 22, 9:15 AM - 10:15 AM - Moscone West - 2005 Printing Options for Oracle Application Express: Jasp...

I'm happy to announce that starting today, enkitec.com is running on Oracle Application Express and has replaced sumneva.com, which was running in parallel with enkitec.com since July. We spruced things up a little bit, created a new UI, and also created some new features & sections - some on the front end, others on the back end.  What many people will notice is that the APEX URL syntax is missing.  We decided to use mod_rewrite rules to give each page a more search engine friendly URL.  How we did all of this - and how it requires zero maintenance - is a great subject for future post. Have a look and let me know what you think!  I'll be the one in the corner feverishly working on my OOW presentations.

Oracle Wallet is a finicky little tool.  However, when you want to make outgoing HTTPS calls from the database, it's a necessary evil.  While the tool itself is straightforward enough, the steps to follow in order to configure it are not as clear. During my research, I came across what is perhaps the best step-by-step document for configuring Oracle Wallet that I have seen.  Jeff Hunter's blog walks through the process in great detail, accounting for even the most minor of details.  You can see his Oracle Wallet post here:  http://www.idevelopment.info/data/Oracle/DBA_tips/PL_SQL/PLSQL_19.shtml While this is definitely not something that I'll need daily, it's definitely getting bookmarked for the next time I'm faced with configuring Oracle Wallet.

It's an unavoidable fact of life as a web developer - you have to test on IE at some point.  The sooner, the better, in my experience.  As a Mac user, I run Windows and Linux in VMWare.  The benefits of this are huge, and most readers don't need them re-iterated here, so I'll spare everyone. What did get annoying is that my Windows 7 VM would mysteriously go to sleep, thus causing VMWare to suspend it after some period of idle time.  I looked all over VMWare for a sleep or suspend setting, and found nothing that seemed to point to solving my issue, as it kept happening. A simple Google search yielded the following post: http://skipmeamadeus.blogspot.com/2009/02/windows-7-keeps-suspending-in-vmware.html It seems that by default, Windows 7 will put the system to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity, as evidenced by this screen shot: Setting the 2nd setting to Never and saving my changes should prevent the VM from suspending in the future.

With the introduction of the iPhone 5, one new feature has more people abuzz than any other: the new adapter.  Instead of the traditional 30-pin dock connector that has become ubiquitous in everything from consumer electronics to luxury cars, Apple has opted to introduce a new, proprietary 8-bin connector dubbed "Lightning".  I think that I speak for most of us Apple product owners when I say that as soon as this was announced, you did a mental tally of all of the devices and cables that would eventually have to be replaced, and I wasn't too happy with the resulting number. Yes, it will be a pain to replace all of my cables and devices that use the older connector, but we'll all complain about, get angry, and eventually over time, forget about it.  Like the CD drive.  Or floppy drive.  Or the replaceable battery. My point here is not to get into a "who innovates more" argument, but rather highlight a type of innovation that is very much organic to Apple ...