Saturday, April 27, 2013

Oracle Application Express 4.2.2 Patch released

Just yesterday, the most recent APEX patch set has been released. It is Release 4.2.2.00.11. The full version just as well as the patch set to apply to a 4.2.0 or 4.2.1 instance can be downloaded from here.

The full details can be found on Joel's Blog

Nevertheless I will have a good look at the release notes, because they contain quite some important notes, which you should be aware of before upgrading. Especially, there were some changes made to the templates. So it is wise to upgrade your existing 4.2.0 / 4.2.1 instance with the patch set directly. If you export/import a 4.2.1 APEX application into a 4.2.2 instance, you cannot leverage the changes immediately, you would have to install the new theme and switch it then. 

I will try to look at these issues in more detail ...

Cheers, 
~Dietmar.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Join me at ODTUG's Expert Panel - Oracle Application Express

In May, I will take part in one of ODTUG's webinars:

Tuesday, May 14, 2013 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EDT

ODTUG's Expert Panel - Oracle Application Express
 

Panelists: Dietmar Aust (Opal Consulting), Roel Hartman (APEX Evangelists ), Dan McGhan (Enkitec)
Moderator: Patrick Cimolini (Patrick International APEX Consulting) 


This is a live interactive panel similar to the ACE Lunch and Learn panels held at Kscope. This innovative webinar is modeled after a call-in radio talk show. You will be able to chat a question to our organizer and if it is accepted you will have the option to verbally ask the question to our panel. Please be sure to have the proper equipment (headset and a quiet office) so that our panelists can clearly understand your question. You’ll also be able to participate in the discussion with the panel while they answer your question. 

The following are some potential topics, but audience participation will shape the scope of the panel: 
  • What skill sets does an APEX team need? 
  • What options are available for producing printed reports from APEX?
  • Moving away from Forms/Reports to APEX 
  • Interactive Reports - THE killer feature of APEX 
  • Developer Productivity - negotiate and tweak the requirements with the customers in order to use standard APEX components to implement them = unparalleled productivity
  • Real-world showcases (APEX can handle application complexity just as well as a high load serving many users)

Personally, I like ODTUG a lot, it is a friendly and very competent place to be, I always enjoy the conference.

The panel will be held for 90minutes, so there will be a lot of time asking questions :).

You can register for the webinar here

Cheers, 
~Dietmar. 

Thursday, April 18, 2013

How to make your browser save your password

Typically and for good security reasons the password manager from either Firefox or any other browser will not prompt you to save the password for the login screen of the APEX workspace or any of your own APEX applications.



Why? The APEX team implemented the login page with the HTML attribute autocomplete=off:

For a development environment I find this behaviour kind of annoying, especially when the APEX builder session times out frequently and you have to login to your workspace multiple times during the day.

Thus I have looked around and found a javascript routine which removes the autocomplete=off attribute from the form.

Just right-click on this link and save it as a bookmark: Force browser to save the password
I have found it here, but it is explained on many other websites as well.

Once you click on your bookmark you will see the following message:



If you continue to log into APEX you will get the typical message where you can save the password now:



It is good practice to use a password for your password manager in Firefox, too. Here are the steps to enable it.

Cheers and enjoy,
~Dietmar.