Book on APEX and XE published

Finally! My first book on Oracle APEX has just been published and is available for sale now! Would make for a great Christmas present :)

I have teamed up with Jens-Christian Pokolm (a long time DBA from Postbank Systems, regular presenter at various Oracle conferences) and Denes Kubicek (Oracle ACE and APEX developer of the year, you know him ;).

Jens-Christian covered the Oracle XE part and Denes and me both worked on the APEX parts.

We took a very practical approach writing about the best practices we have developed through the years and many successful projects.

The book is available only in German, sorry ;).

We also provide a website for the book (http://www.apex-xe-praxis.de). How was it built? Certainly we have used Oracle APEX and XE, what else? Proof of concept ;).

Cheers and have a great Christmas,
~Dietmar.

Oracle APEX Training in Bensheim/Frankfurt (08.03.2010-10.03.2010)

Following up on the other successful APEX trainings in the past, Denes and me holding our next class in September (08.03.2010-10.03.2010). The class will be held in Bensheim (Germany), close to Frankfurt.

Oracle APEX: Knowhow aus der Praxis

The class will focus clearly on conveying the best practices that Denes and me have acquired in many different APEX projects at various client sites.

We have assembled the essence of the methods, strategies and workarounds to deliver successful APEX implementations.

The training will not be theoretical but jam-packed with all the essential tools and tips to get the best results. These are all proven techniques from real world projects.

You can find more information about the class here.

Surely one of the highlights of this training are the Q&A sessions which we will have on both evenings from 19:00-21:00. Bring your current APEX application to the session and we will discuss with you possible strategies and/or help with coding problems in your application right there.

We are looking forward to see you in Bensheim!

Regards,
~Dietmar.

Speaking at the DOAG conference in November

Once again this year, I will be speaking at the German Oracle User Group (DOAG) conference in Nürnberg, Germany.

The conference will be held in Nürnberg from 17.11.2009 to 19.11.2009.

The title of the presentation will be (Producing complex MS Excel reports using Oracle APEX and jXLS):

"Komplexe Excel-Berichte mit APEX und jXLS erstellen"

I have implemented a pretty cool technique on producing complex forms and reports in MS Excel based on a templating approach using the open source framework jXLS.

But it is in more general term a showcase on how to embed a java framework into an APEX application.

Hope to see you there :).

Regards,
~Dietmar.

Oracle APEX Training in Bensheim/Frankfurt (21.09.2009-23.09.2009)

Following up on the other successful APEX trainings in the past, Denes and me holding our next class in September (21.09.2009-23.09.2009). The class will be held in Bensheim (Germany), close to Frankfurt.

Oracle APEX: Knowhow aus der Praxis

The class will focus clearly on conveying the best practices that Denes and me have acquired in many different APEX projects at various client sites.

We have assembled the essence of the methods, strategies and workarounds to deliver successful APEX implementations.

The training will not be theoretical but jam-packed with all the essential tools and tips to get the best results. These are all proven techniques from real world projects.

You can find more information about the class here.

Surely one of the highlights of this training are the Q&A sessions which we will have on both evenings from 19:00-21:00. Bring your current APEX application to the session and we will discuss with you possible strategies and/or help with coding problems in your application right there.

We are looking forward to see you in Bensheim!

Regards,
~Dietmar.

Speaking at OOW 2009

I have just gotten my speaker invitation for Oracle Open World 2009 in San Francisco (October 11-15).

So far I have been talking about APEX at two ODTUG conferences and three DOAG conferences in Germany. So, this time it will be OOW.

Once again I will be talking about an alternative PDF printing solution with Oracle APEX, Jasper Reports:

ID#: S307883
Title: PDF printing with APEX - a cost-free alternative

I have already held the presentation at the last ODTUG conference in Monterey and the presentation was well received. There seems to be a big interest in this solution (PDF printing with APEX). Even for me, this was the reason I had built the integration in the first place ;).

I am pretty sure to have the integration kit ready to be released to the public by then. Currently I am still pretty much engaged in my customer projects and writing a book on APEX (and XE), together with Denes Kubicek and Jens-Christian Pokolm.
It will be in German only and - hey, we are already on Amazon :)

Oracle APEX und XE in der Praxis

One more thing about OOW 2009. I am really looking forward to seeing you guys again at OOW. Who will be going and where will you be staying in SF? I still have to make my reservation for a hotel.

Regards,
~Dietmar.

Mike Hichwa talking about APEX 4.0

On the last ODTUG conference in Monterey Mike Hichwa was giving a presentation on the new features of the upcoming release 4.0 of Oracle Application Express.

You can see the presentation slides and here the complete presentation here, since the ODTUG folks have recorded this session as well as a few others and put them online.

Lots of interesting features are coming :).

Have fun,
~Dietmar.

So Funny

The photos from the last ODTUG conference in Monterey are online available.

It was really good seeing all my friends again. These conferences are really like family reunions - just without the fights ;).

Here I am talking to Joel Kallman and Marc Sewtz.



I also talked to Mike Hichwa about the one or the other new feature I would like to see in the product. Although now I do wonder what he might be thinking about my constant suggestions ;).


It looks like just one too many ;). (Thanks to Patrick for pointing this out).

It was so much fun hanging out with all of you again.

Regards,
~Dietmar.

ODTUG2009 - Excel Generation With jXLS Templates

On wednesday morning (08:00 am, really early) I have been presenting at ODTUG Kaleidoskope 2009 in Monterey / California.
The presentation was about "Generating complex Excel reports with APEX and jXLS".

There I first covered your basic choices when it comes to exporting data to Microsoft Excel.
Then I showed how to integrate the open source library jXLS into your APEX applications in order to generate complex Excel sheets using a templating approach.

In more general terms this was a showcase on how to integrate any kind of open source java library into you Oracle applications.

Since I have just loaded java classes into the database and made them available via a pl/sql wrapper, you can use them in any language accessing the Oracle database and calling the interface via pl/sql.

Thus, you can leverage this in applications using Forms, Reports, APEX, PHP, Java, ... You name it.

You can download the presentation slides here.

If anybody is interested, I will put up an example on how to integrate a java framework into your APEX application.

Are you interested?

Regards,
~Dietmar.

ODTUG2009 - PDF Printing

On Tuesday I have been presenting on ODTUG Kaleidoskope 2009 in Monterey / California. The presentation was about "PDF Printing with APEX - A cost free alternative". There I have shown and detailed the integration of the open source Java reporting engine "JasperReports" into Oracle Application Express for PDF and RTF printing.

For designing the reports you can easily use the graphical design tool "iReport Designer". It will generate the report definition file for you.

The combination of JasperReports and iReport Designer is a real good alternative to the very expensive reporting solution using the BI-Publisher.

You can download the presentation slides from here.

I will make this integration available for free! Right now I have very many things on my list to do, but I will make it available in the future.

If you are interested in such an integration, please drop me a note at: dietmar.aust@opal-consulting.de.

Regards,
~Dietmar.

APEX Stammtisch am 10.2.2009 in Siegburg

The following post is targeted towards a German audience, thus it is in German:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wir (Denes Kubicek und Dietmar Aust) werden am 10 Februar 2009 um 19:00 noch einmal den APEX Stammtisch in einer lockeren Variante durchführen, einfach nur ein leckeres Bier, gutes Essen, interessante Gespräche rund um APEX und interessante Leute.
Weitere Details und die kostenlose Anmeldung findet Ihr hier ...

Danach werden wir dem Stammtisch ein wenig mehr Struktur geben. Bei den Treffen werden wir uns dann auf einige wenige Themen konzentrieren, die im Vorfeld bekannt gegeben werden. Die Teilnehmer können auch gerne ihre eigenen APEX Applikationen vorstellen, ein Beamer wird vorhanden sein.

Wir freuen uns auf ein lockeres Kennenlernen bei einem Bier und evtl. leckerem Flammkuchen.

Leider ist seit dem letzten Stammtisch viel zu viel Zeit vergangen. Dennoch wollen wir es noch einmal versuchen, die Veranstaltung in regelmäßigen Abständen durchzuführen.

Viele Grüße und bis zum Stammtisch,
~Dietmar.

APEX Training in Bensheim (23.03 - 25.03.2009)

We (Denes Kubicek, Patrick Wolf and Dietmar Aust) are happy to announce the next APEX Training in Bensheim/Germany. Thus the rest of the post is in German.

Das nächste APEX Training findet am 23.03.2009 bis zum 25.03.2009 erneut in Bensheim bei Frankfurt statt, im dortigen Aleehotel.

Oracle APEX: Knowhow aus der Praxis

Nutzen Sie das Wissen und die Erfahrung von

• Patrick Wolf, langjähriger Oracle Veteran und Senior Solution Architect bei einer Wiener IT Firma, wurde erst kürzlich vom Oracle Magazin zum „Oracle APEX Developer of the year 2007“ ausgezeichnet. Er ist weiterhin ein Oracle ACE und Betreiber des bekannten Blogs Inside Oracle APEX,


• Denes Kubicek, langjährige Projekterfahrung in den Bereichen Oracle und APEX mit multisite Applikationen, diesjähriger Preisträger des "Oracle APEX Developer of the Year 2008" Awards des Oracle Magazines und sehr bekannt im Oracle APEX OTN Forum für seine Beispielapplikation und


• Dietmar Aust, erfahrener Oracle Consultant mit Spezialisierung auf Oracle Apex, aktiv in den OTN Foren zu Apex und Oracle XE, mit Präsentationen auf den letzten DOAG Veranstaltungen

, um Best Practice Vorgehensweisen aus vielen erfolgreichen APEX Projekten zu lernen.

Neben einer Fülle an Informationen, die wir in vielen erfolgreichen APEX Projekten erarbeitet haben, sind insbesondere die abendlichen Sessions (von 19:00-21:00) als Highlight zu nennen.

Dort stehen wir Ihnen für zusätzliche Hands-On Sessions zur Verfügung, um die Beispiele des Tages durchzuarbeiten oder auch, um konkrete Fragestellungen in Ihren aktuellen Projekten zu diskutieren.

Insgesamt haben wir das Kursprogramm noch etwas aufgeräumt und einige Hands-on Übungen integriert.

Weitere Details zum Kurs sowie die Anmeldung finden Sie hier.

~Dietmar Aust.

Troubleshooting the 404-not found error on 9iOHS

As already posted here and here, you can easily configure the plsql gateway or the dbms_epg to display the oracle errors directly in the browser instead of receiving a http 404 error and searching for the oracle error in the logfiles.

This is a very good solution for development and test environments, but not for any production system due to security implications.

Recently, I wanted to configure an older Oracle Apache (included in the Oracle 9i release of the database).
It uses the older plsql configuration of the wdbsvr.app configuration file.

Here are the instructions on how to configure APEX with that OHS:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/howtos/howto_use9ir2ohs.html.

But how do you configure the DAD now to display the error messages directly?

You can use the following syntax for that:

error_style=Gateway
error_style=GatewayDebug
error_style=WebServer

The default is "WebServer".

See the instructions here:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/A97335_02/apps.102/a90099/config.htm#1005872

Regards,
~Dietmar.

Goodbye Carl, we will miss you

Since I have heard about the death of Carl Backstrom, I am still totally shocked. I had the pleasure to meet him personally at OOW 2007 and at ODTUG 2008 in New Orleans this year. We all had a great time and he is a person who will certainly be remembered.

He left a mark on this world! He was very friendly, always helpful and very passionate about his work. And he was very good at it, too.

It really touches me and reminds me at the same time to always live our lives to the fullest!

Carl, we already miss you and wish you the best wherever you are now.

~Dietmar.

Ubiquituous computing - the future

This post is only partly related to APEX - in more general terms.

Back in 1995 I was finishing my computer science degree at the University of Dortmund in Germany. For my Master's thesis I have spent a year at the Graphics Visualization and Usuability Lab (GVU) at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta / USA.

There I was working on future computing environments (in the FCE group). Especially I worked on the Cyberguide and Classroom 2000 projects.

Also, I was working as a summer intern at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) in the Silicon Valley. I supported Eric Saund with his ZombieBoard project.

There I had the chance to personally meet Mark Weiser, who did the orginal research in ubiquitous computing environments. Especially his paper "The computer for the 21st century" has become very famous.

This has always been a fascinating topic for me, how computers can support us in our everday tasks in a more subtle way to let us continue to focus on the task at hand and not force us to comply with any sort of "user interface". This way the computer steps out of the way and lets us live in "our world". The tools have to become that intuitive that you wouldn't even notice them anymore.

Today I have come across some very interesting articles / presentations I would like to share with you.

The presentation by Adam Greenfield called "Everyware- The dawning age of ubiquitous computing" has really caught my attention. It is really well presented and entertaining. It also talks a lot about the too often neglected social implications of the technology we create and the responsibility that come with it.

One thing that did strike me during his presentation was our (as designers and developers of user interfaces, e.g. with APEX) assumptions about the users and how they were supposed to interact with the software (from our point of view).

I think I will do more usuability testing of my software in the future. We need to sit down with the key users of our systems more often and actually watch them using the software. We need to understand that the way they "actually" use the software and what is "obvious" for them might be very different from what we expect.

We need to sit down and try to use the software to actually solve their business problems they needed the software for in the first place. This way we can understand what we need to do in order to build a cleaner and more transparent user interface.

Also, I have found this very cool video how the iPhone haptic user interface will change the way we interact with computer dramatically and profoundly.

Even more, the new Songdo city in South Korea (video on youtube) and other engagements in this field demonstrate how our lives and the world we live in will change dramatically.

Regards,
~Dietmar.

Database modeling support in SQL Developer

There is an updated statement of direction for Oracle SQL Developer availble at OTN.

Finally there will be support for data modeling using graphical tools:

• Design of logical Entity Relationship Diagrams
• Design of physical schemas
• Reverse engineering of existing schemas
• Import of existing models from Designer and CA Erwin
• Support for objectrelational types and new 11g features

It took Oracle really a long time to decide on a replacement for Oracle Designer (with regards to data modeling, design capture and change propagation).

Finally it is here. Really looking forward to it. It will be available as an optional plugin for SQL Developer.

Regards,
~Dietmar.

My presentation at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008

Two weeks ago I attended the ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008 conference in New Orleans. This was a great event.

The view from my hotel room was truly awesome:


On Saturday I did have some time to hang out with Patrick Wolf in the French Quarter for breakfast:


On the first (pre conference) day, there was an APEX symposium held. The focus was on customer success stories showing off successful real world implementations of APEX projects to add even more "street" credibility to APEX.

It was very interesting to hear about the different projects.

My presentation was about the successful implementation of two projects at the German Telecom Shops. My main struggle there has been the very tight deadlines (only a few weeks) in which I had to deliver the applications.

(Scott Spendolini and me)

(giving the presentation)

(answering questions)

I am very happy that my presentation was well received. You can download the presentation here.

Also, it was the first time for me to record my online demo and show the video during my presentation. This way I could pause the demo and explain more details where necessary. Also I wouldn't have to switch between screens so often to copy/paste information for the demo. Sometimes this makes a presentation a bit hard to follow. The tool I used for that was the Camtasia Studio by Techsmith. I am very pleased with the produced results.

I really enjoyed hanging out with the APEX development team and meeting really nice folks I know from the Oracle APEX forum.

Regards,
~Dietmar.

APEX Advanced Training held in Munich

It is a little bit late, but I still wanted to share the photos from our last Advanced APEX Training held in Munich on 02.06.2008-04.06.2008.

Once again, (Denes Kubicek, Patrick Wolf and me) held another APEX Advanced Training in Munich.


Although the class wasn't as packed as the previous one, it was again very successful and the participants enjoyed the training, judging by their feedback. And we truly enjoyed it, too.


The class covered the complete life cycle of an APEX project, starting with the analysis and planning, design, indepth coverage of the implementation, PDF reporting alternatives, forms, reports, tabular forms, AJAX, Javascript and ended with the deployment, change propagation and administration.

We also covered the ApexLib framework and other extensions as well as our favourite tools we work with. It was the essence of all the lessons we have learned in our previous projects delivering successful and scalable APEX solutions.

We were especially happy to have Marc Sewtz from Oracle join us with two presentations. He is one of the managers responsible for the development of Oracle Application Express (APEX).

(in the picture you see Patrick, Denes, Dietmar and Marc from left to right)

He was talking about Oracle SQL Developer, also showing the integration with APEX: deployment, browsing the data dictionary information of the applications and also how to debug an APEX application.

Futhermore he was giving us some insight about the possible new features of the next APEX release, targeted for 2009. There is no definite feature list at this time.

Many of the packaged applications will become multi-tenant capable.

Websheets will become one of the major features for the next release. Based on the interactive reports (part of the 3.1 release) it will be possible to edit and share the information.

Forms Migration will be another hot topic for the next release.

The APEX framework will be opened up further, giving us a documented PLSQL API and custom item types.

There will be declarative client side validations using AJAX, cascading AJAX select lists, better error handling, more native authentication schemes (NTLM, OpenID, LDAP/SSL) and finally a new DHTML tree component as well as a new DHTML calendar popup for date fields.

Regards,
~Dietmar.

Troubleshooting the 404-not found error on XE

A few weeks ago, Patrick Wolf, Denes Kubicek and me held an advanced APEX training in Bensheim.

After the training, I helped someone from the class troubleshoot an APEX issue. He received a 404 error sporadically.

How do you find the database error which caused the Apache to show the 404-error?

Usually the error is found in the Apache error log. But you can also configure the mod_plsql to show more detailed information in the browser. This is very useful but should only used in development environments due to security reasons. Patrick wrote a nice blog posting about it.

But using Oracle Express Edition (XE) you don't have an Apache / mod_plsql configuration.
How do you find the errors here?

Since Oracle XE uses the http listener of the XMLDB, it needs to be configured through the DBMS_EPG interface. The documentation can be found here.

To see the error log similar to Apache, logon as SYSTEM via SQL*Plus and execute:

SQL>execute dbms_epg.set_global_attribute('log-level', 3);

The error log will go to the database trace file app/oracle/admin/XE/bdump/xe_s00?_????.trc.
Please ignore the bogus error message "Embedded PL/SQL Gateway: Unknown attribute 3" in the error log.

The log levels are:

0 - LOG_EMERG
1 - LOG_ALERT
2 - LOG_CRIT
3 - LOG_ERR
4 - LOG_WARNING
5 - LOG_NOTICE
6 - LOG_INFO
7 - LOG_DEBUG

To turn off the error logging, execute the following as SYSTEM:

SQL>execute dbms_epg.set_global_attribute('log-level', 0);

In order to show the error messages in the browser, you would configure parameter error-style using the DBMS_EPG.

Almost all parameters of the mod_plsql are configurable in the DBMS_EPG, too. They are just named differently (why?). You can find the mapping in the Oracle documentation.

So, how can we enable the debug style messages in XE. It is easy, just connect as SYSTEM to the database and issue the following command:

SQL>exec dbms_epg.set_dad_attribute('APEX', 'error-style', 'DebugStyle');

In order to revert to the standard message format, issue:

SQL>exec dbms_epg.delete_dad_attribute('APEX', 'error-style');

Then your browser will show the following error message instead of the standard 404-error page:


That's it.

Now I have shown how to configure the DAD for XE, but how can you see the current configuration? My next post will cover these instructions.

Regards,
~Dietmar.

APEX Advanced Training in Munich (02.06.2008 - 04.06.2008)

After the successful first training event in March we (Denes Kubicek, Patrick Wolf and Dietmar Aust) are happy to announce the second APEX Advanced Training in Munich. The class three day training (02.06.2008 - 04.06.2008) will be held in the Arabella Sheraton Westpark Hotel.

More detailed information follows in German:

Wir freuen uns, folgende Oracle Application Express (APEX) Schulung für Fortgeschrittene bekanntgeben zu können:

Oracle APEX: Fortgeschrittene Techniken aus der Praxis

Nutzen Sie das Wissen und die Erfahrung von

• Patrick Wolf, langjähriger Oracle Veteran und Senior Solution Architect bei einer Wiener IT Firma, wurde erst kürzlich vom Oracle Magazin zum „Oracle APEX Developer of the year 2007“ ausgezeichnet. Er ist weiterhin ein Oracle ACE und Betreiber des bekannten Blogs Inside Oracle APEX
  


• Dietmar Aust, erfahrener Oracle Consultant mit Spezialisierung auf Oracle Apex, aktiv in den OTN Foren zu Apex und Oracle XE, mit Präsentationen auf den letzten DOAG Veranstaltungen,


• Denes Kubicek, langjährige Projekterfahrung in den Bereichen Oracle und ApEx mit multisite Applikationen und sehr bekannt im Oracle APEX OTN Forum für seine Beispielapplikation und

, um fortgeschrittene Techniken und Best Practice Vorgehensweisen aus vielen erfolgreichen Apex Projekten zu lernen.

Neben einer Fülle an Informationen, die wir in vielen erfolgreichen APEX Projekten erarbeitet haben, sind insbesondere die abendlichen Sessions (von 19:00-21:00) als Highlight zu nennen.

Dort stehen wir Ihnen für zusätzliche Hands-On Sessions zur Verfügung, um die Beispiele des Tages durchzuarbeiten oder auch, um konkrete Fragestellungen in Ihren aktuellen Projekten zu diskutieren.

Weitere Details zum Kurs sowie die Anmeldung finden Sie hier.

~Dietmar.

APEX Advanced Training in Germany - a success!

We (Denes Kubicek, Patrick Wolf and Dietmar Aust) finally held our first APEX Advanced Training in Germany.

The class was quickly booked out having 30 participants. It was a true success judging by the feedback from the participants. And we truly enjoyed it, too.


The class covered the complete life cycle of an APEX project, starting with the analysis and planning, design, indepth coverage of the implementation, PDF reporting alternatives, forms, reports, tabular forms, AJAX, Javascript and ended with the deployment, change propagation and administration.

We also covered the ApexLib framework and other extensions as well as our favourite tools we work with. It was the essence of all the lessons we have learned in our previous projects delivering successful and scalable APEX solutions.


During the evenings we joined the group for another hands-on session from 7-9 pm. They were given the opportunity to discuss the samples of the class as well as their problems in their current projects. This opportunity and the extensive sample application was perceived as a big plus of the class.

We were especially happy to have Carsten Czarski from Oracle join us with a presentation. He was talking about the various possibilities to leverage the Oracle database features in APEX applications, i.e. XML, web services, Oracle Text and Analytic Functions. He also talked about the current release 3.1 of APEX as well as the upcoming features in 4.0.

We will shortly announce the next training which will be held in June in Munich.

Regards,
~Dietmar.