Birthday Gift from Oracle: Ace Director

Yesterday was my birthday which usually starts off by being woken up by my children showering me with drawings they made. Yesterday was no exception.
I also got an email from Oracle, a nice one I might add.

Alex-
I'm happy to inform you that your Oracle ACE Director nomination submitted by ------- has been accepted. The next step is confirming your understanding of Oracle's expectation as well as confirming the support of your company/management to participate.

As requested by my nominator in this matter, the name has been left out. Thank you for nominating me - you know who you are. :)

APEX 4.0: Removing Plugins

Just a quick note so I won't forget, and maybe help you along the way.
A little while ago I created my first APEX 4.0 plugin, which was a nice learning experience. Removing a plugin is (or at least to me) not as obvious as you might think.
This blog entry is about removing an installed plugin.

APEX 4.0 Plugin: Watermark

This simple plugin for APEX 4.0 shows some text inside an item. Usually a watermark is used to give the user extra information to assist with filling out a Form. Creating this plugin was more a learning experience than anything else. If you just want the plugin than follow this link to download it. If you want to go through the same learning experience I went through while creating this plugin, than keep reading.

Connecting Without TNSNames With EZConnect

On my laptop I run two databases, Oracle 10g Release 2 and Oracle 11g Release 2. Next to my regular consulting work, I also give an Oracle Advanced SQL and PL/SQL training called "7Up". This training covers "all" new features since Oracle7.
I tried using VM for having multiple versions of the database, but my laptop would grind to a halt.
Anyway, usually I use SQL*Plus for all my demo's - SQL*Plus Windows that is. As you may know, SQL*Plus Windows vanished from the Oracle 11g database.
Until now I was using SQL*Plus commandline instead, and that was fine.
Last week I received the latest Oracle Magazine (July/August 2010) at home and in it was the AskTom column on connecting without TNSNames.

Looking back at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2010

In case you missed it (how is that possible?) last week was the annual ODTUG conference, Kaleidoscope in Washington DC. In this post I will share some of, what I consider, the highlights of this event.
I always enjoy going to this conference, it's nice to see old friends and make some new ones.

Analytic Function bug and National Championship

Yesterday there were the "NL Masters" in my hometown Oosterhout, The Netherlands. This two day track and field event was the National Championship for Athletes in the Master Class.
While volunteering (I was running around all day as a courier) I noticed a familiar name on the list. Toine van Beckhoven, currently ranked first in the PL/SQL Challenge. Small world. Toine finished first on the 400m hurdles in his category and is now the official Dutch National Champion. Congratulations, Toine.
Being involved in this event triggered a question regarding ranking. And we're back to analytic functions... ;)

Analytic Function bug?

Last Tuesday we had an ODTUG Preview mini-conference at our office in Nieuwegein, The Netherlands. Nine presentations with nine fine speakers. Too bad the session were in parallel, and thus you had to pick and choose which session to attend. Oh well, that's always the case with conferences, even tiny ones like this one.
Because I'm doing a presentation during the ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2010, I also did my presentation last Tuesday.
The feedback I got was good, and I also got some pointers to make the presentation better.