8th Annual NYC Metro Oracle Users Group Day

If you're in the NYC metro area tomorrow, come join me at the 8th Annual NYC Metro Oracle Users Group Day. The day kicks off with Andy Mendelsohn's keynote on Oracle 11g. Andy Mendelsohn is Oracle's Senior Vice President of Database Server Technologies, and our team, the Oracle Application Express group, is part of that organization.

And a little bit later, at 11:45am I'm on with my presentation about the architecture and configuration options of Oracle Application Express. I'm planing to dig a little bit deeper than usual into how APEX actually works, and walk you through the different setup options with the APEX Listener, Embedded PL/SQL gateway etc and review the install and update process. I presented several different APEX topics at a number of recent NYOUG meetings, and in addition to questions about these feature, I also always get a lot of architecture and configuration related questions, so I thought this time, I''ll dedicate my whole session to this.

You can find more information about the event here:

http://www.oracle.com/dm/11q1field/60403_8th_annual_metro_users_group_day_ny.html

culture shock ;-)

This week's DOAG 2010 conference in Nuremberg finally gave me an opportunity again to visit Germany after not having been there in a few years, and to present to a very engaged local APEX community in my native tongue. I think the conference was a great success and I was excited to see how many APEX sessions were scheduled this week - and it seems all the APEX sessions drew large audiences. I think Patrick Wolfs's and my sessions had about a hundred participants, close to capacity of the rooms. And Carsten Czarski had managed to hook us up with an additional session in the Demo Kino, so I ended up speaking for about three hours straight on Tuesday. I had a few customers come up to my podium after my presentations, thanking me for the information on APEX 4 and my demos and after they had seen on the schedule that I'm from New York, congratulating me on my excellent German skills. Of course they were less impressed, after I revealed to them that I had actually grown up in Germany.

I also really enjoyed the DOAG party Wednesday night. I was having dinner with Todd Trichler, Kuassi Mensah and Tom Kyte. The event organizers had setup a great buffet, live music and very neatly arranged tables. And each table had very attentive waitresses, who took good care of us. A few minutes into the dinner Bryn Llewellyn stopped by, and someone in my group suggested we could move a little and Bryn could pull over a chair from a neighboring table - which he promptly did. You should have seen the look on the face of one of our waitresses, she appeared to be in complete shock and disbelieve that someone would dare break the order of the tables and chairs. And just as I was making a joke to Todd, explaining some of the cultural differences, Steven Feuerstein stopped by, grabbed a chair from a neighboring table as well and unfortunately for him, took a chair from the VIP table were Oracle Germany's top management was having dinner. That of course was too much for the poor waitress, who promptly moved the chair back into it's proper position. Thankfully one of the DOAG officials became aware of the situation and personally setup a chair, plates and silverware for Steven on our table and we got to enjoy the rest of our dinner. Here's a photo taken by Markus Eisele (http://blog.eisele.net/):

APEX at Oracle Technology Fairs in NY & NJ

Are you an Oracle Application Express user in the New York / New Jersey metropolitan area? If so, stop by one of Oracle's upcoming Technology Solutions & Systems Fairs. Those are free, half-day events where I'll be demonstrating Oracle Application Express, SQL Developer and the SQL Developer Data Modeler. I'll be available to discuss any questions, issues or feedback you might have.

Here are the dates, locations and links to register:

Marriott Bridgewater, NJ
Tuesday, October 19, 2010, 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Hilton New York, NY
Tuesday, October 26, 2010, 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

See you there!

Getting Ready for Oracle Open World 2010

Are you coming to Oracle Open World next week and are you wondering what sessions to attend while you’re there? Well, if you’re travelling with your iPhone, iPad, or Android, then look no further, here’s you mobile web app you’ve been waiting for. With this app - build with Oracle Application Express 4.0 - you’ll easily find all the APEX related sessions, hands-on labs and the Demo-Grounds schedule by date, company, presenter and location:

http://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=oow2010

… if you’re travelling with any other device, like one of these laptop computers or netbooks they’ve been using way back when, you’ll still get to enjoy this app, as long as you’re using a Webkit based browser, like Apple Safari, or Google Chrome.

Hope to see you there, I’m up on stage on Monday, 11:30am, Hotel Nikko, Golden Gate, talking about Tabular Forms in APEX 4.0.

Oracle Application Express 4.0 available now!

After more than two years of development, a number of hosted early adopter's releases and after having successfully updated apex.oracle.com, Release 4.0 of Oracle Application Express is now available for download on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).

The main enhancements and new features of Oracle Application Express 4.0 include:

• Websheets
• Team Development
• Dynamic Actions
• Plug-Ins
• Enhanced Interactive Reports
• Improved Tabular Forms
• Updated Charts
• Support for RESTful Web Services
• Modernized Themes & Templates
• Dynamic calendars
• and many more...

You can read all about the new release, the new features, how to get started and how to install Application Express on our updated OTN home page. And if you're not quite ready yet to update to the latest release, or if you haven't used APEX before, and just want to get to know it, you can sign up for a free workspace at http://apex.oracle.com.

Scott Spadafore

Nearly 10 years ago, Scott and I worked on a Consulting project in Chicago, enthusiastically writing J2EE applications, extending the Oracle E-Business Suite, and headed for near certain project failure, when our team got introduced to some obscure group of Sales Consultants out of Oracle Government, Education and Healthcare. They showed us a web development framework called “Oracle Platform”, which was based on PL/SQL of all languages. Surely this couldn’t be any good, so un-cool, so last century, so not Java. Yet given the mess our project was in, we had no alternatives, had to give it a try and actually managed to bring this project to a successful close.

We were so much older then, ….

Web Bid & Compliance Team, July 2001

A few months later, Scott and I joined the “Oracle Platform” team, which today is better known as the APEX team – and the rest, as they say, is history.

Scott passed away last night. I truly enjoyed working with him over all these years and hanging out with him, whenever we had a chance to meet. I don’t think APEX and the APEX community would be what they are today without his many contributions. Thank you Scott!

OTN Developer Day in New York City on 01/13

Spend a day with us learning the key tools, frameworks, techniques, and best practices for building database-backed applications. Gain hands-on experience developing database-backed applications with innovative and performance-enhancing methods using tools such as Oracle Application Express, SQL Developer, Java and .NET. Meet, learn from, and network with Oracle database application development experts and your peers.