David Peake on Oracle APEX

Integrating APEX with OAM

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Thanks to the hard work from Christian Neumueller from the APEX team and Ramana Turlapati from the Access Manager team we were able to successfully integrate Application Express into Oracle Access Manager. The result is a new white paper available via the OTN APEX on the Learn More page (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/apex/learnmore/index.html#tech). Simply scroll down to to Technical Information and White Papers section at the bottom to find the Integrating Oracle Application Express with Oracle Access Manager White Paper.

For those of you using EBusiness Suite you should be able to use this new white paper in conjunction with the Extending Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with Oracle Application Express White Paper to integrate OAM into your environment.

Are you in Higher Education and use APEX?

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:08:00 +0000

For some time I have been interested in furthering the use of Oracle Application Express in higher education.
There are a number of institutions currently using Application Express either as part of their curriculum or for internal use.
One of the big problems is knowing who else in higher education is using Oracle Application Express and SQL Developer.

Therefore to provide a forum for people to come together I have set up a LinkedIn Group: Oracle APEX Educators SIG
Please join this group as a way to communicate ideas, collateral and knowledge.

Cheers,
David

FREE OTN Developer Day in Poland June 15

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Tue, 24 May 2011 23:20:00 +0000

Our FREE OTN Developer Day is going global.
We are going to be in Poland on June 15.
Go here to see the event overview and register.

This is a BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop) event so that you can keep everything you work on.
These days concentrate on hands-on labs and using the various tools rather than just sitting through presentations.

Hope to see you there!

APEX 4.1 Early Adopter Released

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Fri, 06 May 2011 21:51:00 +0000

As Joel announced here the APEX 4.1 Early Adopter is now available on http://tryapexnow.com.

This release is not nearly as huge as APEX 4.0, however, our hyperactive development team have been cranking out lots of new features for you to enjoy.

To find out what you can try out for yourself go to the Feature Description application. There are a number of other features that we are still working on, the most notable being Mobile Templates and Data Upload. Never fear, these will be coming to an APEX Early Adopter near you soon -- Read when we do the next major build of our EA.

Make sure you check out our new and improved Websheets interface. This feature is not 100% complete but we couldn't wait to show off the new look and feel!

Enjoy our latest offereings and be sure to provide feedback.

Oracle E-Business Suite and APEX White Paper

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:21:00 +0000

The Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Application Express teams are proud to announce the release of the Extending Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 using Oracle Application Express white paper.

Oracle E-Business Suite delivers a wide range of functionality to handle core areas of your business processing needs. However, there are situations where you want to extend your information systems beyond the range of Oracle E-Business Suite. Many times these necessary extensions are meant to handle unique industry conventions, specific customer requirements, or perhaps to offer some other competitive edge. Sometimes these change requests are simple enough, but other times more extensive customizations are needed. In these scenarios, Oracle Application Express, also known as Oracle APEX, provides an easy way to create supplemental applications that are easily integrated with your Oracle E-Business Suite and its data.

This paper outlines how to extend Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 (and up) functionality using Oracle Application Express. Recommended architecture and security considerations are discussed in detail.

You can find the paper on the APEX OTN Site > Learn More > Extending Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 using Oracle Application Express {Under Technical Information and White Papers}

All the necessary files are also available from My Oracle Support Note: 1306563.1

This document helps customers and partners implement integrated Application Express extensions to the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 and up. The document is complete with a worked example. This solution also requires Oracle E-Business Suite Patch 9659153

4.0 New Features Application

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:20:00 +0000

Application Express 4.0 introduced many new features. You can run the sample application here or download the application and install into your own workspace here.

APEX 4.1 Statement of Direction Published

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:05:00 +0000

Want to learn more about what we are planning for APEX 4.1?

Then read our new Statement of Direction.
APEX 4.1 is scheduled for release in calendar year 2011.

Regards,
David

APEX 4.0 Known Issues

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:06:00 +0000

Since releasing APEX 4.0 we have identified a number of issues.
Many are directly related to upgrading applications from previous releases.
The known issues are outlined on OTN here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/html/4.0_known_issues.html
As with any upgrade we strongly recommend you test your applications in a development environment before applying to production.

Our development team is working very hard on these issues.
Many issues have workarounds provided.
Where appropriate we are also releasing patch set exceptions which can be downloaded from Oracle Support and installed in your environment.

We intend to roll all of these fixes into an APEX 4.0.1 release.
Before you ask - I can't provide dates for APEX 4.0.1 release!

Regards,
David

Updating apex.oracle.com Side-effects

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:37:00 +0000

As Joel Kallman posted apex.oracle.com upgraded to APEX 4.0, version 4.0.0.00.46. To do this we ran a one-off patch on apex.oracle.com.

This patch caused the Websheet Data Grids and Reports to be lost.
Therefore, if you had defined a Data Grid or SQL Report previously, you will need to recreate them. This information can't be recovered.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Rest assured that this was caused by the one-off patch and will have no impact on the APEX 4.0 Production Release once available, or any future patches or releases.

Cheers,
David

New APEX Listener Forum Now Available

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:44:00 +0000

We have created a new OTN Forum just for the APEX Listener: http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=858&start=0

We thought it best to separate this forum from the regular APEX Forum as the APEX Listener will have unique posts and to make it easier for all to review.

David

APEX 4.0 Oracle-By-Examples now available

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:55:00 +0000

Our curriculum development team have been very busy of late developing new Oracle-By-Examples (OBEs) for Oracle Application Express 4.0.

These include:

Getting Started with Application Express {Updated from previous versions to include APEX 4.0 content}

Interactive Reports (x 3) {Updated from previous versions to include APEX 4.0 content}

Building a Websheet in Application Express 4.0 {New}

Building Dynamic Actions in Oracle Application Express 4.0 {New}

Extending your Application Using Plug-Ins in Oracle Application Express 4.0 {New}

Building Charts, Gantts and Maps with Oracle Application Express 4.0 {New}

Please go the Oracle Learning Library to teach yourself how to use many of the new features in Oracle Application Express 4.0: Oracle Learning Library
{If you look at the URL you may have noticed this site is written in APEX :)}

Happy learning!

APEX 4.0 Sample Applications

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:43:00 +0000

Included within the pre-production APEX 4.0 build on http://apex.oracle.com is a revised Sample Database Application and a brand new Sample Websheet Application. Simply go to Application Builder and then Create > Sample Applications and install or re-install.

The Sample Database Application has new (less dated) clothing products and new features such as dynamic actions, plug-ins, maps, etc. Download the application and see working examples of many of the new features.

The Sample Websheet Application is all about big cats and shows how multiple pages can be constructed incorporating information from data grids.

FREE event in Reston, Virginia - June 15

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:29:00 +0000

The OTN Develop Day is coming back to Reston: See details here.

The event we ran last time in Reston led us to completely change the way we organize and run these days. Since then we have created a new VM for running on Oracle Virtual Box: Download from here. These days are designed as BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop) days so we can run the events more frequently and at the end you have a fully configured laptop. This also alleviates the issue we had last time in Reston where we didn't have enough machines for the participants.

Hope to see you in Reston!

APEX 4.0 comes to http://apex.oracle.com

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 08:03:00 +0000

Our free "development only" hosted site has been upgraded to the latest build of APEX 4.0. This is a pre-production build and is not available for download.

Upgrading apex.oracle.com is one of our big milestones with any new release. We always do this before releasing the software to production for various reasons. This service gets over 3 million page views a week, contains over 30,000 applications of which at least 2,500 are active in any week, and we have a broader range of applications being used and abused. This all helps to ensure the software is ready for production.

The existing Early Adopter III will still be available for the time being. A special thanks to all the participants in our Early Adopter program. Your feedback and support has been outstanding and immensely useful to our development efforts.

Enjoy and please let us know if you find major issues.

Regards,
David

APEX 4.0 Early Adopter III (EA3) now live!

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:12:00 +0000

As we speed down our development path towards production release (in Calendar Year 2010) we have reached yet another milestone - Roll-out of Early Adopter III.
Simply go to tryapexnow.com

This is our last planned version of the Early Adopter and includes many new features, numerous bug fixes, and a more refined user interface.

As with when we rolled out EA2, everyone will need to request a new workspace.
The old EA2 (http://184.73.244.154/apex) will be available for a few weeks to allow people to recover what they need from the old environment. You may experience issues with exporting from EA2 and importing into EA3. We have found some issues with applications including charts. This is primarily due to changes in the chart export parameters and will not impact applications exported from earlier releases (APEX 3.2 etc).

Enjoy our latest offering and please keep the feedback coming.
We do read them and try to respond when we can.

Regards,
David

Indiana Oracle User Group Tech Day

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:35:00 +0000

For anyone who lives / works close to Indianapolis I will be presenting at the April Technology Day.

You can find details of the event here. This is at a different venue from last year.

I have four sessions:

APEX 101 – Overview of Oracle Application Express

Oracle Application Express Interactive Reports, Charts, and Printing

Oracle Application Express 4.0 New Features

Developing Applications with APEX 4.0

The last one should be particularly interesting as I will have no slides just 100% demo.

Hope to see you there.

David

Things you have in common with Larry

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:17:00 +0000

Larry and I have something in common -- We both like sailing!
I prefer catamarans to trimarans, but hey all those design experts were proven right - the BMW ORACLE Racing Trimaran [BOR90]is arguably the fastest sailing boat ever built. I did a lot of sailing back in Australia where I owned a small cat. In fact a good mate of mine Kevin Crowley of Pacific DBMS (free plug least I could do ... and they offer APEX Consulting services as well) still has it in his back yard.

Now something else Larry and I have in common - We both like Application Express.
Larry has been a big supporter of Application Express since the beginning.
Sergio Leunissen, former APEX PM and now in the Linux group, developed an APEX application for the BMW ORACLE Racing team when they first started out years ago.
Again with the 33rd America's Cup challenge the team used APEX together with Data Mining to support the team.

Listen to this podcast from Ian "Fresh" Burns, design coordinator for the team on how Oracle technology helped the team to win the America's Cup: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OracleDatabaseInsider/~5/nussC-gxZFQ/8576609_Ian_Burns_030810.mp3

Cheers,
David

WANTED -- Oracle APEX Customer References

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:05:00 +0000

I need customer references for Oracle APEX. You must be allowed (have legal approval) to provide me with information on your APEX application(s) and a company image. I'm also interested in hearing from Consulting Companies providing their clients are prepared to share information with Oracle. {References from anywhere not just the US graciously accepted}

Very highly regarded (and loved by Marketing) if APEX is running on Oracle Database 11g. HUGE bonus points if you are also using other Database options (RAC, BI Publisher, etc).

I use references for the following:

Quotes on APEX OTN Home Page

Podcasts

Customer referral - Potential customers wishing to speak to others

Presentations

Publications (articles, white papers, etc.)

Other marketing such as convincing Sales that APEX can make them $$$

I always check with references before using them and where possible provide drafts before publication, so you can always elect not to be included in any of the above.

So if you want to tell the world of your wonderful achievements using Oracle APEX and get your name in lights send me an email (david.peake@oracle.com).

Thanks,
David

New Content on APEX Home Page

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:18:00 +0000

It has been a while since I updated the content on the APEX OTN Home page.

Finally got some time to refresh the content including two books, three podcasts, some great customer case studies, and reshuffled the section up top to make it easier to find OBE's etc. Take a few minutes to review this excellent new content.

I also added all of the outstanding requests from consulting companies, blogs, internet applications and commercial applications - Apologies to those who had to wait so long to be added.

We now have listed:
101 Consulting Companies
63 Blogs
28 Commercial Applications
27 Internet Applications
12 Hosting Companies

An impressive list. If you're not listed and want to be it is as easy as sending me an email with details and images.

Regards,
David

New York Oracle DB Developer Day - BYOL

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:35:00 +0000

Join Mike Hichwa, Marc Sewtz, Christina Cho and myself in New York for the Oracle Database Developer Day on Wednesday, January 13.

Unlike previous events this is a Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL) event.
You can choose to install XE, APEX, etc directly on your laptop or install Sun VirtualBox and we will provide you with a pre-configured image with Oracle DB11gR2, APEX, SQL Developer, etc. already installed. If you want to use Sun VirtualBox it is important to download the software and accept the End-User Agreement (http://www.virtualbox.org/)

APEX 4.0 Early Adopter now available!

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:18:00 +0000

The APEX Development Team is proud to present the Early Adopter for APEX 4.0.

Please fill out the survey and request a workspace on our hosted instance @ http://tryapexnow.com.

This Early Adopter is not production ready and some new features may contain bugs or incomplete functionality.

Websheets is not yet available in the Early Adopter. Our plan is to produce an updated release (Early Adopter Phase II) once Websheets is ready to be tested.

The new theme used throughout the Application Builder is still a work in progress, especially in respect to Internet Explorer. Therefore we have disabled access from IE at this stage.

Online Help has not yet been updated and does not include any new features. An application describing all the new features will be available shortly.

Please provide feedback directly from within the Application Builder.

UKOUG Conference

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:41:00 +0000

I'm off to Birmingham for the UKOUG Conference.

I recently updated my APEX Conferences Application to include a page for printing out the Agenda: http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=59652:13:0::NO::P13_CONFERENCE:UKOUG

This conference is growing in popularity for those in the APEX Community.
If possible you should try and attend.

Dimitri has organized an APEX meet-up on Monday Night see details here.

Look forward to getting back to England and meeting up with many of you.

Travelling to Ora*GEC in Quebec & Montreal

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:30:00 +0000

For anyone in the Quebec (11/24) or Montreal (11/25) area you should try to attend the Ora*GEC 'Application Express for Mission Critical Applications' event. I will be there to give a presentation and a sneak peek of APEX 4.0. Unfortunately I don't speak French so you will have to listen to me in English. However, the other presentations will be in French.

http://www.oragec.org/pls/htmldb/f?p=105:34:0:::::

I atteneded a similar event put on by Ora*GEC last year and it was well attended.

It is always good to catch up with Serge Tremblay from Oracle Sales who is a huge advocate of APEX, and of course the thriving APEX community in the area.
Hope to see you there,

David

APEX Demo Grounds - Moscone West

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:57:00 +0000

Traditionally the APEX team staffs the Demo Grounds with members of the development team and this year is no different. In recognition of how busy our demo pods are, the Oracle event organizers have given us 3 demo pods in a prime position right at the end so we have some room. So to see our latest development efforts, and get your questions answered directly by those who develop the features come to Moscone West.

Updated Statement of Direction

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:48:00 +0000

I have just updated the APEX Statement of Direction and refreshed the APEX 4.0 Presentation.

One of the big new additions is Team Development (as some caught onto with my last blog) including Built-In Feedback. This came out of our work with Teamspace - a stand alone packaged application with some of the same sorts of capabilities. Due to development constraints the Teamspace packaged application has been put on hold for a short while.

Check out the presentation for a few more details on many of the major 4.0 features.