OTN Forums Upgrade

Written by Paulo Vale on Sunday, June 29, 2008

After a downtime, OTN Forums came up with some look changes and new functionality.

After a quick look, here are some of the changes I've noticed:

- pre tag don't work anymore!!! However there is still the option to use the code tag. Unfortunately this code tag highlights random keywords!

- A link to report post abuse;

- New post editor, a Rich text editor with possibily of:

   . Marking a thread as a question;
   . Adding emoticons;
   . Adding Tags;
   . Automatic saving drafts;
   . Run spell checker;

I'm sure there are more changes ;)

APEX web form based on procedure using out parameter

Written by Paulo Vale on Friday, June 20, 2008

When creating a form region on APEX, there are several options to base the form such as a table, a view, a webservice or... a stored procedure.

Creating a form based on a stored procedure can be very useful to execute database manipulation operations in a simple way. In fact, it is even possible to obtain responses from the database directly to an APEX page using OUT parameters.

To illustrate this, here is a simple example. Let's say you want to build a form where a user is asked to guess a number. The page should also inform the user if the guessing is right or wrong.

First of all let's create the procedure. Note that there are two parameters on this procedure. p_guess (IN parameter) is used to send the value and p_result (OUT parameter) is used to receive the procedure response.



Now to create the form, create a new page or region. Next choose "Form", "Form on a Procedure", identify the database schema and enter the stored procedure name. Follow the form wizard creation till the end entering adequate values.


After you run the page you will be presented with two fields. Enter a value into "P_Guess" and press submit button to get a response into "P_Result".


Now to beautify the form you can hidde the result field and integrate the response message into the notification template. If you go to page edit mode you will see the auto-generated "Run Stored Procedure" after submit process. Edit this process, click "Messages" and put the reference to the item "Process Success Message" like this: &P6_RESULT.


Follow the link to run this example: http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=25110:6

APEX websheets!

Written by Paulo Vale on Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Just came across this blog post on Dimitri Gielis's Blog and I just can say.... well, just follow the link and see for yourself. Web 2.0 features out of the box, tabular form with inline Edit and much much more.


The screenshot was stolen from Dimitri Gielis's Blog.

NEOPI - Free tool to prepare Linux for Oracle installation

Written by Paulo Vale on Wednesday, June 11, 2008

NEOPI stands for Neoface Oracle Pre-Installer.


This is a free tool which installs the missing but required Linux packages for an Oracle Software installation. Beyond that, also configures the kernel and security parameters and creates the Oracle account and all due privileges. Configuration files can be customized to the DBA needs.

My colleague at Neoface João Oliveira, blogged about NEOPI some days ago. Please follow the link to his blog. There, you can find all the details and the download link.

If you try this tool, we would be very happy to get some feedback.