Build an image gallery using APEX

Written by Paulo Vale on Friday, December 19, 2008


This time, I'll show how to build a simple image gallery using Oracle Application Express (APEX) and taking advantage of Jquery framework capabilities. But first of all, follow the link to see the magic happening ;)

There are several slideshow or gallery plugins for Jquery. You can choose the one you like more and re-adapt the code to fit the plugin requirements. My choice was Pikachoose.

Pikachoose is a lightweight Jquery plugin that allows easy presentation of photos with options for slideshows, navigation buttons, and auto play.



Lets begin creating a simple database structure to store the images.

Create a sequence to be used by image id:



Create a table to store the images:



Now on APEX, following the wizard, create a data entry form based on "GAL_IMAGES" table.


Go to Shared Components>Application Items and Create an Application Item. Ex: G_IMAGE_ID.

Create an Application Process to retrieve the image from the database. Identify the point at which this process will run as "On Demand". The point of "On Demand" is that it will only fire when requested by a page process.



Now create the page where you want to put the image gallery and then, Edit Page > HTML Header:




On the same page, create a PL/SQL Dynamic Content region:



And run...

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Oracle SQL Developer 1.5.3 released

Written by Paulo Vale on Friday, December 12, 2008


I've just noticed that, the new version of Oracle SQL Developer (1.5.3) is now available for download.

Reading the release notes I can see the major functionality introduced, beyond the traditional list of bug fixes, is the translation to Japanese. The good news is that the next SQL Developer 1.5.4 release will be translated to other 7 languages: Spanish, Italian, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese and Korean.

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My UKOUG 2008

Written by Paulo Vale on Thursday, December 11, 2008

Last week I went to Birmingham UK to attend the UKOUG 2008 conference. João came along with me and I can speak for both of us when I say that we had a great time. We found Birmingham to be a very clean and organized city and it was also good because we managed to stay in London for the weekend where we had the time to visit some of the most famous touristic attractions.


The conference itself was very good. There weren't that many APEX related sessions, but there were other interesting topics regarding SQL Developer and Oracle Database like performance, security, globalization and PL/SQL development.


In what concerns the APEX sessions...

I liked very much Roel's presentation with the title "(Re)Developing a logistic application in APEX in the real world". I think he made this presentation at OpenWorld, but I didn't had the chance to attend at that time. With this presentation Roel showed us some tricks using jquery, ajax and json to add extra functionality to an APEX application. Really nice job!

John also presented a session that I attended for the first time with the title "Application Express Best Practices". There were some nice tips there and most of them used by few Apex developers and system administrators. I think John is a very talented speaker... I had this opinion from a session I had the opportunity to attend in the past, and I could confirm it this time.

There were two other sessions by Dimitri Gielis and by David Peake. Dimitri's session ("Mastering Charts in APEX") was similar with the one he presented at OpenWorld. He had to rush in the best part of the presentation, when he was showing Anychart 5 functionalities and advanced customization, with no apparent reason since the room was clear for at least more 45 minutes after the session, and the presenter and the attendees were interested in continue with the presentation! David also rushed is presentation about "Oracle Application Express Now and in the Future". He managed to show (live demos included) Websheets, Forms Conversion and Interactive Reports in only one session!!!

It was very nice to find some familiar faces like David, John, Roel and Dimitri that I had the opportunity know at the OpenWorld last September, and to meet Anthony, the newest member of the APEX development team. All nice guys :)

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