Friday, December 21, 2007

Would you like to be a Certified Oracle Application Express Professional

Firstly Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year :)

Oracle University is conducting a survey (written in Application Express of course) to determine the demand for creating a Certification Program with Oracle Application Express.

Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=33676:1
We need as many people as possible to take the survey to make this a reality. The deadline for getting feedback is mid-January so please don't delay just click on the link, a few minutes now will help the whole Application Express Community!

The information entered will only be used to evaluate the demand for the program.

You can also elect to be emailed when the Oracle Application Express Advanced Course (currently under development) is available.

Be safe over the holiday period!

Regards,
David

UPDATE: Thank-you to all of those who took the time to complete the survey. We had a great response but unfortunately Oracle University will not be building the Certification Program YET. They have other certifications they are currently building and will reassess Oracle Application Express hopefully in the near future.

Oracle University are still pushing hard to finish the Advanced Course and for those who checked the notification you will be sent an email as soon as it is available.

Thanks,
David (14-Feb-2008)

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Early Adopters 3.1 Now Available

The Oracle Application Express Team is pleased to announce the debut of our 3.1 release for public evaluation.

To access our hosted instance, please register.
If you have participated in a previous evaluation, you will bypass the short survey.
After registering, you will be provided with access to the evaluation instance from which new accounts can be requested.

You will need to request a workspace and then wait on the email notification.

The new feature that we would really like feedback on is our new region type - Interactive Report. This is a new SQL query based region type that lets end-users customize which columns they see as well as column order. End users can also, sort, filter, break, sum, highlight, and add computed columns using simple pull down menus.

The full list of 3.1 features available with this Early Adopters release is:

  • Application Builder
    • Interactive Report Regions *
    • Templates
      • Improve Searching of templates
      • Replace Templates
      • Publish Templates
      • Bulk Unsubscribe of templates
      • 2 New Themes

    • Wizards
      • Allow for early exit when creating HTML region
      • Create Interactive Report Wizard
      • Remove 32k limit on Create Application on a Spreadsheet

    • Addition of Application Groups
    • Simplification of Page Group pages
    • Addition of Application Date Format
    • Support for Declarative Media Type
    • Can view existence of run-only application (but cannot edit them)
    • Display Application Name in App Builder footer

  • Workspace Administration
    • Workspace-specific Builder Notifications

  • Runtime Installation
  • APIs
    • Augment APEX_MAIL API to support adding attachments to e-mails



Please remember, the success of this Application Express 3.1 evaluation depends on user feedback. All participants are strongly encouraged to provide feedback using the feedback application. The link is also available from within the hosted Application Express 3.1 evaluation instance Home page.

Thank You!

The Application Express Team

Statistics on apex.oracle.com

Every week the APEX development team collects statistics on our FREE hosted environment apex.oracle.com

For the Week ending 11/18/2007:
1,647,648 total page views for the week
2,076 distinct applications accessed during the week
2,773 distinct users logged in throughout the week
243 new workspaces approved in the past week

Total Workspaces: 11,290

As you can see from the numbers given, this is a very active APEX site.

You may or may not be aware that when you are within the APEX Development environment then you are actually running APEX applications.
Our development team uses APEX Development and PL/SQL packages, etc. to build the components you use to build your applications.

Keep sending in those details on your large applications!

Hardware
The database server is a Dell PowerEdge 1950, 2 dual-core CPUs @ 2.33 GHz. The machine has 16GB RAM with NAS for storage. I have no details on the Web server machine(s), as these servers are shared by other instances, and not only for apex.oracle.com.

Regards,
David

Thursday, November 8, 2007

The Bigger the Better

I'm often asked for examples of "large" Oracle APEX installations.

A friend of mine (Mr. B) is working with a large customer who asked that question of me again ... so I thought I would use this blog to ask YOU for further examples and also relay my answer to these sorts of queries.

What I want is examples of applications with a large number of concurrent users and/or a large number of pages. The more detailed information the better.

{Our policy is to not publicly use any company or organization names unless we have authorization to do so. Further to that, I am always interested in getting new references but that is entirely up to you, so please indicate if you would be interested}

If you prefer you can email me directly rather than replying to this blog.


As for my response to "Is APEX popular and can it scale to support large numbers of users?":

As a starting point they can look at the APEX OTN Page and then Community and Partners where you can see the large number of Consulting companies, Hosting companies, Internet Applications, even Commercial Applications. There is also close to 30 different people blogging about APEX. Some of these sites have very large user bases (Metalink, Think, Ask Tom, etc.)
Oracle has several very large internal sites running Oracle Application Express including sites such as ARIA People Search (also available as a Packaged Application) and sites for tracking customers, etc.

A review of some of our internal lists, on who is using Oracle APEX, reads like a who's who of the Fortune 1000 and also includes numerous government agencies and public institutions. The popularity amongst Universities around the world is growing rapidly as they have discovered what a great tool Oracle APEX is for teaching Web design, SQL, and database fundamentals.

We also have some large customers in the process of migrating commercial Oracle Forms applications to APEX (Some with 1,000's of Forms).

The APEX OTN Forum is the third most popular Forum on OTN behind SQL & PL/SQL, and General Database (http://forums.oracle.com/forums/category.jspa?categoryID=18)

Our Packaged Applications are downloaded an average of 3,000 / month.

The free hosted instance on http://apex.oracle.com receives an average of 1.4 to 1.5 million page views a week and now hosts over 12,000 Workspaces.

The number of sessions at Oracle Openworld is growing annually (see earlier blog) which all goes to show how popular APEX has become [15 Sessions, Hands-On-Lab, 2 DemoGround booths, etc.]

To highlight the importance of APEX within Oracle - with 11g APEX is now included in the seed database. Therefore, whenever 11g is installed so is APEX, it is no longer on the Companion CD.

I could go on but you get the idea ... What I really need is some customer details on those big applications I know are out there. Personally I am sick of hearing (from ill informed people) what Oracle APEX supposedly can't do - I want more ammunition on what it DOES do.

So please get back to me with details on those Oracle APEX applications and the Bigger the Better.

Regards,
David

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Oracle Openworld Sessions

For anyone attending Oracle Openworld in San Francisco we have put together a paper on all the Oracle Application Express sessions, hands-on-labs, demo ground details, etc.

From the link above, select 'Customized Schedules' in the Sessions, Keynotes and Exhibits section and then scroll down to the Technology "Focus On" papers.

I suggest you download the FOCUS ON Database Application Development – Oracle Application Express paper to ensure you don't miss any of the great APEX sessions and labs.

Another useful "Focus On" paper is FOCUS ON Database Application Development – Oracle SQL Developer.

Look forward to catching up with lots of people throughout the event.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Latest Statement of Direction

We have updated our Statement of Direction in respect of 3.1 and 4.0.

One of the biggest changes is the fact that "Dynamic Reporting Regions" feature has moved from 4.0 up to 3.1. Carl Backstrom's blog Oracle Application Express (APEX) 4.0 - Preview Video shows a video of what sort of functionality to look forward to.

Other notable enhancements now planned for 3.1 include improvements to the PDF report layout and enhanced print attributes allowing for more control of PDF document structures.

Previously our plan was to not include any UI changes in 3.1, therefore, we would not need to go through and translate the source. Obviously introducing this new region type and changes to our PDF printing screens includes significant UI changes.

The down side of this is that it will take us longer to release 3.1 but the upside I think will make the wait VERY worthwhile.

For those of you attending Oracle Openworld we are planning on having one of our Demo machines running our "Pre-Production" version of 3.1. We can't guarantee that everything will function 100% (it is pre-poduction after all) but we should be able to give you a nice sneak peak of what to expect. So please stop by the Demo Grounds and say G'day!

Friday, October 12, 2007

New OTN Feature Casts

I know there have already been several blogs on Scott Spendolini's podcast with Oracle Magazine.

We have gone and added a link on our Podcasts and Viewlets page to his podcast together with one from Tony Jedlinski. These and other excellent podcasts can be found by clicking on the Podcasts link on the left hand column of all OTN pages and then selecting Oracle Magazine Feature Casts.

The official blurb on each of these podcasts:
Oracle Application Express 3.0: A Closer Look (Sep 18, 2007) Scott Spendolini, CEO, Sumner Technologies, speaks with Oracle Magazine senior editor, Jeff Erickson, about the benefits of Oracle Application Express 3.0 and how it works with the Oracle database. Learn how to get started customizing this powerful tool to meet your business needs.

Catching the Express (Jun 25, 2007) Tony Jedlinski, Oracle Magazine author and editorial board member and the Director of Web Content for the IOUG, talks with Oracle Magazine about his use of Oracle Application Express at the IOUG today and the upcoming Oracle Application Express-based OPEN project.

Given the vast experience both Scott and Tony have with Oracle APEX, I certainly enjoyed listening to them and getting their perspectives.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Growing Community now Showcases Applications

Please check out our new and improved Community and Partners page.

We have changed the look of the page completely as it was getting too big. Having too many companies to list on one page is a problem we love to have.

Now there are Links to our Americas and European Consulting Companies, Hosting Companies and Blogs. We have also added two brand new links for Internet Applications and Commercial Applications.

Internet applications really help to show how diverse and creative sites made with Oracle Application Express can be.

The Commercial applications illustrate companies who see the benefit of building in a flexible secure tool. These applications meet very diverse business requirements and are well worth checking out.

Special thanks to Jorge Rimblas, Flavio Casetta, Jan Huyzentruyt, and Dimitri Gielis for sending me their Internet applications, together with Hotsos - Doug Gault and Mythics - Nick Intintolo for their Commercial applications.

We are regularly adding new companies and sites, so please come back regularly.

If you want to be added to our site please send an email to oracle-application-express_ww@oracle.com or me.

Regards,
David

Monday, September 10, 2007

Presenting APEX

Please check out our completely updated presentations here.

This page can be found from our APEX Home page on OTN towards the bottom of the page under More Information.

Here you will find many of the standard presentations including 3.0 Overview, New Features, Access Migration, and Forms Developers.

There are also several one off presentations from Mike Hichwa (Advanced APEX, and MWOUG 11g Keynote), Joel Kallman (Managing APEX) and myself (Managing Large Application Development).

I know many people were asking for copies of several of these presentations.

Enjoy :-)
David

Friday, August 31, 2007

WANTED - APEX Internet Applications

I am looking to add a new page to our OTN APEX Page

This page will showcase Internet applications built using APEX.

If you're interested please send me an email (david.peake@oracle.com) with the following details:
  • Screenshot (170 pixels wide)
  • Link
  • Short description of the application
There are so many creative web sites out there built using APEX.
Creative in terms of the UI experience and also creative in the way in which the application meets the business requirements or interfaces to other tools.

Look forward to hearing from you :)Publish Post

About Time

Well I figured it was about time that I got out of my own way and started a Blog of my own.

My intention is to use this Blog to inform people on new things happening within APEX.
One of my other reasons for starting the blog is because there are times when I need to get things from the Community as well.