APEX: Dynamic Action in Interactive Report

Yesterday I was showing a colleague how to use a Dynamic Action in an Interactive Report to do an update on the underlying table. To get this to work prior to APEX 4 you would need to write some javascript on the page as well as an Application Process. Mostly I used the method described by Roel Hartman a number of years ago.
Want to take a look at a demo first before the steps to take to make it work? It's right here.

ACED Nordic Tour 2012: 4 days, 4 countries

Can't believe it's almost two weeks ago.
Together with Mark Rittman, Carl Dudley, Sten Vesterli, and Tanel Poder, I was invited to join in for the ACED Nordic Tour.
During the Nordic Tour we visited Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Four countries in four days.
I knew it was going to be a busy week, but didn't expect to be exhausted when I got back home on Saturday.
On Monday I flew into Copenhagen, Denmark where I met up with Sten Vesterli and Ken Holmstykke Jensen from the Danish Oracle User Group. They were kind enough to show me around the city, Tivoli and the World Press Photo exhibit, all very enjoyable, thank you very much.

Tuesday was the day of the Danish Oracle User Group at the offices of Oracle Denmark. In Denmark I did two presentations: "Analytic Functions Revisited" and "Edition Based Redefinition". When all the sessions were done, and the beer started to come out, we had to go to the taxi and rush to the airport.

Wednesday was Stockholm in Sweden. The location was absolutely stunning, an old school building (so I was told), with grand staircases and high ceilings.
My session in Stockholm: "Who's Afraid of Analytic Functions?" and "Getting Started with APEX Plugin Development".
This time we really had to hurry to get to the airport, nearly losing Carl on the way the to the trains.

Thursday: Oslo. The board of the Oracle User Group Norway were kind enough to welcome us in the hotel with some food and drinks. A nice welcome after having had airport food for a few days. My sessions in Oslo: "Getting Started with APEX Plugin Development" and "Who's Afraid of Analytic Functions?"

Friday, the last day of the tour: Helsinki, Finland. The sessions that I did in Helsinki: "Getting Started with APEX Plugin Development" and "Solving Puzzles with SQL: Cheating when playing the game SET" . Even though my last name was spelled wrongly on the agenda, I can't really blame them - they are not the first. This time we didn't have to rush to the airport, at least not all of us. Mark and Tanel were flying out that day to go home.
Sten, Carl, and myself did stay an extra night in Helsinki so we could enjoy a very nice meal and some Finnish specialties (which all seem to include wodka).

Like I said before, on Saturday I was exhausted. Looking back at the tour I really enjoyed it. Wish I could see more of the countries than just the airport, but maybe some other time. Looking back at the tour, I really enjoyed it and was in good company.

Thanks to the user groups who invited us, and organizing the conferences. Special thanks to the Ace program for sponsoring.

OOW 2012: Little things make me happy

Yesterday evening we had the annual "We went to OOW and this is what's new in the world we call Oracle" at AMIS. Starting around 5pm and ending around 10pm a lot of information was presented by several AMIS colleagues.
My contribution to the evening was (amongst others) a little bit of new features in SQL and PL/SQL, only a little bit as there is too much to cover in just 20 minutes.
It's the little things that make me happy. What is the little thing that I like?
When you define a table you can assign a default value to a column (here it comes) based on a sequence. Take a look at the following (taken from the presentation Tom Kyte did during OOW):

First a sequence is created, with the resounding name S. Next the table (named T) is created where the column X has a default based on the NEXTVAL of the sequence S.
Just to repeat the line of interest:

x int default s.nextval primary key

How cool is that?
No longer will you need to create a trigger to fill the column with the nextvalue from a sequence, you just declare it this way and you're done.
Maybe it's just syntactic sugar, I don't know (yet) and frankly I don't care. I like the fact that this feature makes it more declarative to populate the primary key (or any other column of course).
I'm happy.

SQL Developer tip: Don't open the table

One of things I don't like about Oracle SQL Developer is that if you are browsing and clicking on tables, it can automatically open the table on the right side of the IDE.
There is a simple way to switch that off, just heard how to switch this feature off. Navigate to the Preferences settings:

Goto Database >> Objectviewer, and uncheck the tickbox labelled "Open Object on Single Click"

And that's it.

OOW 2012: Is PL/SQL still alive?

Yesterday Bryn Llewellyn, Distinguished Product Manager, did a session called "PL/SQL Enhancements brought by the latest generation of database technology". The room was packed. For the upcoming release of the Oracle 12c database the enhancements were broken into three areas:

• Improved PL/SQL and SQL interoperability

  In the current version of the Oracle database you needed a Nested Table or Varray Type defined at schema level in order to be able to use it in the TABLE operator. This is no longer necessary, it can be a PL/SQL declared type.
  The types that can be used as bind variables has been extended: Boolean, Nested Tables can be used as bindvariable in Dynamic SQL.
  Subquery Factoring (the With clause if you will) can hold private functions, the use case presented for this: pretty print an integer in K, M, G, T.
  Using userdefined PL/SQL functions in a SQL statement is not advisable, but if you really need to there is a new pragma: PRAGMA UDF. With this pragma the statement is almost as fast as pure SQL.
  

• Security

  A new step has been taken to continue on "least privileges", meaning that the user only gets the privileges that are absolutely necessary. A Role can be granted to a PL/SQL unit.

• Improved programmer usability

  The ability to inspecting the callstack has been improved by the introduction of a new package: UTL_CALL_STACK. The package contains numerous functions to help in this area, such as current_edition and lexical_depth. White listing of program units: restrict which program unit can be called by other program units.

So, is PL/SQL still alive? YES! ALIVE AND KICKING!

OOW 2012: My Schedule

This will be my third time attending Oracle Open World and I'm really looking forward to the event. It is very hard to make a schedule, there are so many good session available. I thought I'd share my schedule, it might inspire you for your own schedule (or makes it harder to make a choice) and I can look at my schedule without having to login to the schedule builder.

APEX: Custom Image on Button Bug

When you use a custom template for your APEX application and you want to use an image on a button, you might encounter a small, trivial bug. Thanks to Anthony Rayner and twitter for a simple workaround. The Setting

For the custom theme that is used in the application that I'm working on, an Application Level Substitution string was created. You can define these substitution strings at the application level, available from the application home page.