More APEX sessions at Oracle OpenWorld 2008

Written by Paulo Vale on Monday, July 21, 2008

According to Oracle OpenWorld Blog, the top 25 voted sessions at Oracle Mix will be presented at Oracle OpenWorld 2008. Among the 25 winners there is a good representation of APEX, meaning that APEX community is very active. The winners, APEX related are:

Rank: 1 (113 votes)
Security: Writing Custom Authentication Schemes for Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX). 
Submitted by: Raj Mattamal

Rank: 5 (90 votes)
How to Hack an Oracle Application Express Application. 
Submitted by: Anton Nielsen

Rank: 6 (87 votes)
Successfully Developing and Integrating Applications in Oracle APEX Within Oracle E-Business Suite.
Submitted by: Haseeb M

Rank: 12 (75 votes)
(Re)Developing a Logistic Application in Oracle APEX in the Real World. 
Submitted by: Roel Hartman

Rank: 16 (68 votes)
Oracle APEX Team Development: Best Practices, Collaboration, and Application Deployment. 
Submitted by: Priya Lapham

Rank: 18 (66 votes)
Rapid Development and Validation of Oracle APEX Applications at an FDA-Regulated Medical Device Company. 
Submitted by: Deb Groskreutz

Rank: 21 (61 votes)
Using Oracle APEX to Analyze Your PL/SQL Source Code.
Submitted by: Flavio Casetta

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What I miss the most in interactive reports

Written by Paulo Vale on Monday, July 21, 2008

I'm obliged to say that the Interactive Report Regions is one of the best features in APEX. The possibilities are huge. It's like passing the power to the end users.



A few days ago, I've posted about IRR having an upgrade in the next APEX release. The feature is being called as websheets. The possibility of having a tabular form with inline edit combined with the actual IRR features it's a "just can't wait" functionality.



Still, Interactive Reports are not perfect :) There are some functionalities I miss from the classic reports. I know that I can still use the classic reports, and I do use them many times, but having the possibility I tend to use the IRR as much as I can.



One of the functionalities I miss the most from classic reports is the possibility of being based on a function returning a query. This adds the possibility of a report being dynamically based on different tables or views and having dynamic where clauses. One of the situations where this is very useful is if you want to build a report wizard system in your application.







Also important, would be the possibility to have control over the report template and CSS, something similar to what we have in APEX classic reports.

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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 ;)

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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

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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.

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