A couple of months ago I had a request to create a “Freeze Columns” dynamic action plugin for an interactive report which behaved like the following demo. Whilst I wasn’t sure whether it would be possible I knew that in APEX 4.0 we had some event hooks such as “After Refresh” which we could bind a dynamic action to.… Read more
A one-day course taught by Cary Millsap London, UK, 8 Sept 2011 Oracle trace data is an extraordinarily rich information source for database application developers, administrators, and anyone who cares about the speed of an Oracle Database application. Oracle trace files include information that yields value throughout your software life cycle, whether you’ve bought prebuilt applications or built them yourself… Read more
“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.” Frank Herbert. Collections are single-dimensioned lists of information, very similar to 3GL arrays. Much like ‘in-memory’ tables. Maybe that’s why they started out as PL/SQL Tables. The PL/SQL only version got renamed a couple of times. When first introduced in Oracle 7 they were called PL/SQL tables… Read more
PL/SQL and SQL both are incredibly powerful languages that allow us to do some pretty amazing things with data. If you’ve been around the Oracle community for some time you’ve probably realized, either through your own experience or by reading articles, if you are able to accomplish a task using a single SQL statement then that is preferred over using… Read more
Autonomous transactions are a bit like that dark part of the forest, beyond the rickety bridge, where the shadows are shaped like witches and bats swarm soundlessly from the trees. We all know it’s there, but the wise are in no hurry to visit. Here, however, is a definition: an autonomous transaction is a completely independent transaction that is started… Read more
Cary Millsap (Oracle Ace Director, co-founder of the OakTable) explains how the principles of the Agile Manifesto have defined his most commercially and technically successful projects (specifically, the implementation of the Agile Manifesto called Extreme Programming (XP), as explained by Kent Beck). Watch a full video recording of the session, including the Q+A.
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It isn’t straightforward to design a database application that has to provide text data in several languages. There are several problems to overcome such as, for example, allowing the translation bureau to work independently, using their own specialised formats. Fortunately, Oracle Apex can, if you follow the advice in this article, do the hard work for you.… Read more
Going mobile is one of the hot topics at the moment. Everyone has a smartphone with internet connection and a browser. Some prefer brand A against brand B, but that’s just a personal preference. It doesn’t really change a thing. You want to join the crowd and provide a mobile interface for your APEX Application? There’s nothing easier than that!… Read more
APEX can be a great way to create an application rapidly on an Oracle Database. Although it is generally straightforward, there are just a couple of things you have to watch out for. It’s becoming a little too easy to blame everything on the bankers these days...… Read more
What’s the best way to make a presentation on Agile practices? Practice Agile practices. You could write a presentation “big bang” style, delivering version 1.0 in front of your big audience of 200+ people at Kscope 2011 before anybody has seen it. Of course, if you do it that way, you build a lot of risk into your product. But… Read more
Table functions are functions that produce a collection or rows (either a nested table or a varray) that can be queried like a physical database table. You use a table function like the name of a database table, in the FROM clause of a query. The difference with a physical database table in the FROM clause of the query is… Read more
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