We’ve previously talked a little about our joint venture and what we are planning to do,and now you are probably wondering when it all begins?

Truth is, all of us are working really hard to surprise you with something you haven’t seen before. In a good way, of course :-)

And there is a lot to do:

• Setting up a company
• Getting coders on board
• Writing plugins
• Building a complete framework
• Testing the whole lot
• Packaging it all and making commercially available

But we’ve got it under control, and we’re not planning to be the next XY Consultants. We are a software company and believe in what we do by eating our own dog food. So you can also expect to get some ready-to-run-Apps, but we’re saving that for Phase 2 along with our very own Sencha Touch framework for APEX.

Our primary goal is to create the best Plugins and Software the “world of Oracle APEX” has ever seen and hand them over to you to use. To help you build even better Applications than you are already doing.

Stay tuned as we’ve got a feeling you won’t be waiting much longer…

As everyone knows Matt is a wizard when it comes to complex Plugins, especially when using ExtJS.

I, on the other hand, see my strengths in putting things together and make it easy to use.

With all our experience in APEX and working in countless Projects we combine our strengths to create an astonishing product.

What will it be?

APEX, of course. Plugins. A Framework.

Everything working together and easy to use, even for not so experienced APEX Developers.

It’ll open up new possibilities. Up to now APEX Applications have been very lightweight and more on the static side. Using our Products everyone can create very rich APEX Applications, even one Page AJAX Apps without any submit will be possible.

Over the next weeks we are going to tell more and more about what exactly we’ve been working on for months now, and what the timeline to the first release will be.

Plugins will be judged upon skill level of its creator. That means beginners and experts will not be in the same category, to make it fair to everyone.

Read all the Details on Martins Blog and see the rules on the ODTUG Page.

To participate in the competition go to www.apex-plugin.com and login/register to submit your Plugin.

Judges for this Competition are: Martin, Dan, Tobias, Learco, John, Dimitri, myself and of course Patrick as the inventor of Plugins.

Don’t hesitate to submit your Plugin, even if you think you won’t make the first prize. It’s also about getting a Review and maybe valuable Feedback by the judges.

Not only do we have best spring weather in Vienna with blue sky, sunshine, 20 degrees Celsius and an office with sundeck. This is also the day we officially announce a new business union.

After years of working with the tool of my choice (APEX, of course) and trying to ease the few glitches it has with things like ApexLib Framework, several Plugins, Browser-Addons or standalone Tools, i finally met a fellow idealist.

Over the last 6 months we got to know each other, admire each others ideas and inspiration and decided to team up to combine our individual efforts.

Coming from different worlds (in every meaning of that word) we had long talks about everything and found matching goals and complementary skills and ambitions.

So, please welcome my buddy Matt Nolan, most of you know him as APEX Freelancer and crazy about ExtJS. Man, he can do stuff, you don’t believe!

Our first offspring is soon to come, so stay tuned!

What you can expect is a Product with our Ideas, Sweat, Blood and Heart in it. Well, of course also hundreds over hundreds of working hours.

Read all about the Patchset, Download Options and more in the Blog Posts of Roel, Patrick, Mike, Dimitri and many others. Or simply go to APEX on OTN.

After i downloaded and installed (flawless, thanks for that guys and girls!) APEX 4.1.1 i compared it with APEX 4.1 to see what has changed (besides the obvious).

If you are new to APEX 4.1 please also consider reading my comparison of APEX 4.0 and 4.1.

Again i’m highlighting only a few changes i think might be important. If i talk about not documented Packages please just don’t use them if you aren’t 100% sure what they might break ;-)

Views:

• Views Security Checks (which data is the user allowed to see) have been improved, now using the new function wwv_flow_security.has_apex_administrator_role_yn -> that also removed the schema-check for the current APEX_0401xxx User, which might lead to less View changes in future versions
• APEX_WORKSPACE_FILES has description for more file-types
• APEX_APPLICATION_PAGES corrected evaluating the BROWSER_CACHE
• APEX_APPL_LOAD_TABLES changed the name of column TABLE_ID to LOAD_TABLE_ID (because the underlying Table Column has been renamed)
• and we got some new Views:
  • APEX_REST_RESOURCE_HANDLERS
  • APEX_REST_RESOURCE_MODULES
  • APEX_REST_RESOURCE_PARAMETERS
  • APEX_REST_RESOURCE_TEMPLATES

Packages:

• WWV_FLOW_API adds a function to change the Build-Options of an Application and a couple functions to handle REST Resources
• APEX_APPLICATION is enhanced by function trim_nl_sp_tab which trims New-Line, Spaces and Tabs from start and end of the input string
• WWV_FLOW_GLOBAL has a new switch “g_cloud”. Whatever that is used for :-)
• APEX_LANG lets you now overrule the application-id used in function MESSAGE
• APEX_UTIL can now check for “Must not be public User” in PUBLIC_CHECK_AUTHORIZATION and also got some new (non-public) functions: HAS_RESTRICTED_CHARS, SET_BUILD_OPTION_STATUS and CLOSE_OPEN_DB_LINKS
• APEX_ERROR gets new parameters to overrule the page-item or row-number and to ignore ORA-Errors. New function GET_ARIA_ERROR_ATTRIBUTES returns ARIA attributes for errornous items when running in screen-reader-mode
• APEX_JAVASCRIPT can now use minified js-files for runtime and uncompressed-js-files for debug-mode
• APEX_PLUGIN_UTIL has 2 new functions: PRINT_HIDDEN (adds a hidden input item) and PRINT_PROTECTED

General:

• APEX Items got a new attribute “Restricted Characters”, but I haven’t seen where it is used (yet)

The Benefit is breathtaking, suddenly your Translators are able to know what they are translating – that means where the text they are working on is used. e.g. on the Action-Button in Region XY on Page 234.

This can help your Translators delivering better and more meaningful Translations.

While i wrote on the Tool – which was supposed to be released as free and open-source ApexLib Tool – a customer approached me and wanted a full fledged Translation Suite with many more features than just the XLIFF 1.2 export, but also Online Translations with immediate effect and translating in DEV, TEST and Production (and synching the changes back, of course). Also they wanted to edit the texts of their base language, the one used in the main Application.

So I wrote it.

It runs for quite some time now and works like a charm. But that is not the topic of this post.

During writing this Translation Suite I moved the development of the XLIFF-Tool from ApexLib to the new Suite and worked long hours on it to deliver not only what APEX already does, but even a little more and add all that extra Information into the XLIFF-File.

Here are some things i learned during that development:

• APEX already provides a huge amount of functionality and i can only thank all those developers for doing such a great job. Making their product better is a lot of work on my side.
• XLIFF 1.2 provides much more information (“context”) for each element and that bloats the resulting File to a factor of 5-10
• I do like giving stuff away for free, but there is a limit. In that case it’s amount of uncountable hours I put into XLIFF 1.2 Export and thus can’t give it away for free as ApexLib Tool
• There is also a Limit to which APEX can be improved and extended without having to directly change (update) Flow-Tables. For the full Translation Suite i crossed that border for a certain feature with the effect of beeing in an unsupported state there.
• The potential market for a commercial XLIFF 1.2 APEX Export Tool is too small.

All that – and beeing involved in many other Projects – lead me to the decision that there won’t be a XLIFF 1.2 Export Tool. Neither for free, nor commercial.

At least for now.

If you are interested in either the XLIFF-Tool or the full Translation Suite and willing to pay your share, then please drop me an email.
Ultimately this may change my mind and I continue working on these things.

Or Keyboard Shortcuts for Save, Run, Next and others?

What about efficient and quick Navigation through the Application Builder? e.g. Jump directly from Edit Page to Application Items?

Then you’ll need the all new ApexLib APEX Developer Addon, which is a so called “User Script”, an Extension for your Browser which enhances the Application Builder with all those Features.

All you need is a current Version of Firefox with Greasemonkey or Google Chrome.

Read all about it and get the ApexLib APEX Developer Addon.

As a Developer you might sometimes have the requirement to redirect from one page to another which displays an interactive report, but this report should be filtered by whatever value is selected on the first page.

Every User knows how to set a filter and every Developer knows how to use Page Items in the Report WHERE Clause, but most Developers don’t know how to call a Page and set a Filter for an IR with URL Parameters.

The APEX Application Builder Users Guide has a section where these URL Parameters are described, but when i search for that i won’t come up most of the time. Hence this blogposting (things i blog about always come up in search…).

If anyone wants to look it up in the Documentation it is in Chapter 9, Section Reports, Paragraph “Linking to Interactive Reports”.

For all others, here is a short summary:

1. Read the basic APEX URL Syntax to know whats what
2. use RIR in the ClearCache Section to reset to the default Interactive Report (clear all filters, formats, …) on the target Page
3. use CIR to clear all report settings
4. set Filters in the ParamName/ParamValue Section, using IR<operator>_<column_name> as ParamName where operator can be EQ,LT,GT,LTE,GTE,NEQ,LIKE,N,NN,C,NC
5. you can omit the operator if you want to use “equal” as operator
6. to set a Rowfilter use IR_ROWFILTER as ParamName
7. all these settings target the default public report on the target page. if you want to set filters for any other public report use IR_REPORT_<alias> as Request

If you want to change Interactive Report Filters in a PL/SQL Process use the Package APEX_UTIL, it contains functions like IR_RESET, IR_FILTER and some other IR_* utility functions.

After some quick investigations i detected that some Javascript was missing in my Plugin.

If an Item-Type Plugin is created and it is using something else than an <input> Tag with type=”text” you need to add a Javascript Callback function for getValue and setValue.

Example:

function info_oracleapex_html5_text_field(pSelector,pOptions)
{
  // Register apex.item callbacks
  apex.jQuery(pSelector).each(function(){

    apex.widget.initPageItem(this.id, {
      setValue      : function(pValue, pDisplayValue) {
        apex.jQuery('#' + this.id).val(pValue);
      },
      getValue      : function() {
        return apex.jQuery('#' + this.id).val();
      }
    });
  });
}

You can not only provide Callbacks for setValue and getValue, but also enable, disable, hide and show.

If you are looking for examples you can find some in the file apex_widget_4_1.js (which is provided with your APEX installation in the images/javascript folder).

I already fixed my HTML5 input type plugins and you can download the new version already.

I had to try it out and see what’s new.

What i have found is 2 places where you can choose between desktop and mobile browser and one place where you can enter mobile defaults.

Edit Theme now has a section to enter the template defaults for mobile.

Edit Page Template let’s you choose between desktop and mobile browser.

Create Page Wizard lets you choose if you want to create a page for desktop or for mobile browser.

All these settings don’t have a functional impact on your application. I just helps you to choose the right options.

With Oracle APEX 4.2, when mobile support is fully enabled, i expect to see more things like this as well as an impact on functionality. For example loading the jQuery mobile libraries or switching between Flash- and HTML5-Charts.