Ok, I know, I didn't had time to finish my posts about Openworld 09.
But , time goes so fast ...
Now I am at ODTUG Apexposed in Atlanta and I will be presenting tomorrow and wednesday.
I will "try" to keep my posts short but informative.
And don't worry, I will someday, soon, find some time to finish my posts about OOW 09 with some pictures...
I arrived in San Francisco on Saturday night. The night was short and as always , it is hard to get some good sleep when you are not home.
Anyway, on Sunday, despite the small jet lag and ther fact that I had almost no sleep, I attended some interesting sessions.
I attended Tom Kyte's keynote. As usual, very good presentation. He talked about what sometimes seemed as a small change resquest could be very complex. All the different teams (UI, DBA, Developers, etc) have to work together and be involved when new changes have to be done.
After that I had to run to Moscone West (15 minute walk) to attend the APEX ODTUG symposium. It was great to meet and see everyone from the comunity again.
I attended also a presentation on converting ACCESS to APEX.
I find that there are more and more people interested in APEX. I mean, after more then 5 years, the product is gaining some real maturity and keeps improving.
I ran back to the Hilton to the APEX 4.0 Session. It is the third time that I see a presentation on 4.0 and everytime, there are new nie features added. Now, in addition to tabular forms, websheets, declarative ajax and item plugins, there is a new team development section. You can now follow bugs, todo's etc. You can eve ask for feedback from your users directly from your application. Very nice new feature.
I will post some pictures of the slide later.
David did a quick demo of 4.0 and it looks like we are getting closer to a beta version. I just can't wait to get my hands on it :)
Ran back to Moscone to the APEX ask the expert panel. Again, some interesting discussions with the APEX team.
Today, more apex sessions and some hands on sessions.
As for the temperature in SFO, well, this year is colder than last year and I heard something about a storm tomorrow. We'll see. Hopefully, the sun should be back on wednesday in time for the appreciation event and the Aerosmith show.
Time goes fast ... Already Openworld 09.
Just a quick post to say that I will be there again this year and I will attend most of the APEX presentations.
I also plan to give a presentation at the UnConference on wednesday morning about SAAS with APEX.
Like I usually do, I will keep this blog updated during the week with APEX and other Oracle related stuff that I will have the chance to see during my visit in San Francisco.
I would like to congratulate Michael Hichwa for being nominated for the Innovation Showcase because of Application Express !
I am sure that he will win since APEX is really an innovation. You have my vote.
Read more here : http://www.oracle.com/innovation/innovator-michael-hichwa.html
This year , the Apex Meetup will be on tuesday 7:30 PM at the Fourth Street Bar & Deli.
Check Dimitri's Blog for more details.
The webconference has been moved to wednesday September 23rd.
So , you still have a chance to attend. To register, contact Marc Côté via e-mail at info @ insum . ca
The presentation is an overview of APEX and explains why and how to migrate an MS Access application to Oracle Application Express.
Converting Ms Access Applications
To Oracle Application Express (Apex)
LIVE WEB CONFERENCE
11 to noon ET
September 16, 2009
Microsoft Access might look suitable for a departmental application but for IT managers it is like a time bomb. Eventually, the super user that put it in place and manage it will leave your organization, or the data will suddenly be deemed sensitive, or a web interface will be needed or the application will need to grow to a larger number of users.
Oracle Application Express (APEX) presents an incredible alternative to MS Access with the added advantage of a 100% browser based environment where users are able to access their applications from any PC, and from any location together with the performance, security and scalability inherent to the Oracle database.
+ APEX COMES BUNDLED WITH EVERY ORACLE DATABASE !
MIGRATING FROM MS ACCESS TO ORACLE APEX
Insum Solutions is solely dedicated to Oracle Application Express. Since 2002, we are a one stop shop for customers across North America looking to create new applications or to migrate existing applications to APEX.
Building on real life customer applications, Insum Solutions has experienced the MS Access to APEX conversion process and is in a unique position to present and discuss the numerous benefits achieved by its customers who have gone that route and the best practices that help ensure a successful conversion project.
· Introduction to Oracle Application Express (APEX)
· APEX vs. ACCESS
· The steps to a successful migration
· Questions and Answers
Target Audience
IT Executives, VP Application development, Corporate Architecture & Project manager
Across all spectrum of the industry
Dates and Location
Wednesday, September 16, 11am ET
The presentation that Mike Hichwa gave at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 09 about APEX 4.0 is available here.
It explains all the nice new features of the next release of Oracle Application Express.
I had to wait to get back home to post about ODTUG Kaleidoscope. Network connections were kinda hard to get and I was so busy attending conferences and networking with everyone.
So Here is the resume of the rest of my week at Kaleidoscope ODTUG 09 :
Day 2 - Monday
I tried to attend Tom Kyte's session but , it was full. Tom is very popular.
I attented Scott Spadafore session on APEX security essantials. He explained in details how we can prevent cross site scripting and were APEX has built-in filtering. He also talked about Session State Protection, session state protection and non-persistent password item types. I will have to read my notes and implement some of those security features.
The same day, Mike Hichwa presented APEX 4.0. All I can say is, wow. Tons of new features. Some of them I heard for the first time like built-in feature for REST Web Services. Also, the item plugin feature looks very promising as the comunity will be able to create new item types and share them.
I think that 4.0 will be an important step especially for those who are migrating from forms. The client side will be more rich since you will be able do implement AJAX declaratively (Dynamic Actions).
The APEX Meet-up was on monday night. This meet-up was the biggest by far. I counted 40 people. It is always fun the meet with old and new APEXcionados. The discussions always comes back to how cool this tool is and how the APEX community is great.
Day 3 - Tuesday
Attended Tom Kyte's session Database worst practices. This time I was early. Like always, his presentation are very good and right to the point.
Dietmar Aust presented Jasper reports integration with APEX. He showed how we can design very nice reports using a WYSIWYG editor. You have to install an appserver like tomcat and you can create reports using iReport. This is another thing that I have to try. We are currently using PL/PDF which is very good, but if you want something were it is easier to design, Jasper seems like a good alternative.
Dietmar mentioned that he would offer the integration kit for jasper reports for free. So keep an eye on his blog.
Roel Hartman session on how to integrate APEX and Oracle Forms was also very interesting. Roel showed us how he integrated a real form in an APEX page using iframes. He also explained how he got APEX and forms to communicate together. I think that this method could be useful if you are partially converting a FORMS application to APEX and if you had shared canevas between the OLD application and the new APEX application.
Brian Spendolini explained how we can build an APEX application on the iphone. Again, another thing that I have to try. Very interesting.
Tuesday evening , we had a great "Meet the Oracle Ace Reception". And also, I had a super great time playing Texas Hold'em with friends.
Day 4 - Wednesday (Quebec National Holiday june 24)
I attended the following sessions :
"Intelligent Data Exploration with APEX and OLAP" by Marty Gubar. He showed how to create drilled down reports on Oracle OLAP Cubes. Another good utility of APEX.
"Effectively Manageing an APEX instance using Resource Manager" by Joel Kallman. He explained how to create and maintain consumer groups to avoid having long running cpu intensive processes impacting the database. This is a very nice feature of the Enterprise Edition.
Then, it was my turn. gulp !
I talked about our Software As A Service and how we serve multiple companies with the exact same application. I showed some of the techniques that we use for having different looks and menus. So hopefully people learned something.
Day 5 - Thursday
Well, this was the last day. I was surprised to see how many people attended the last sessions.
I saw Patrick Cimolini "Developing a Rules and Guidelines document for APEX" session. For people like me that are more involved on the administrative side, this session was very interesting. He explained how they created development guidelines, standards and rules to have a team of developpers working on projects and delivering these projects on time and on budget. Basically, sometimes, you have to let go some of the cool stuff to be able to deliver on time.
Josh Millinger session "10 Easy ways to develop faster and more professionnaly with APEX" was also very popular. Lot of great tips to be more productive while developing with APEX. On of my favorite is : Don't try to re-invent the wheel. There are so many built-in features, especially for AJAX and Javascript.
So this is it. Now I have to get back to work.
It was nice to meet with everyone again. I had a lot of fun with other Canadians (Canapeans) fellows from Cognera in Calgary and with people from all around the world. Hopefully, we will have the chance to meet again at Oracle OpenWorld.
On Sunday , it was the symposium Day !
It started with an APEX keynote from Joel Kallman. If you ever get the chance to see this presentation , don't miss it.
Joel was dead on with his talk about APEX being ahead of the curve. He showed some screenshots of FLOW (the ancester of Marvel, HTMLDB and finally APEX). In some degree , it was not so different than the current version. Sure, there are more features now but at that time you could already develop pages with wizards with only a browser and an Oracle database.
He made a parallel with the president Obama saying that like APEX , a couple of years ago, they both were
- Virtually Unknown
- Underestimated
- had "Grass root support"
He also talked about the SAAS (Software As A Service) and PAAS (Platform As A Service) approach of Oracle Application Express.
The community of APEX is also growing and growing. Here are some stats that Joel showed us :
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