eLearning that works

A colleague and I recently completed the 'Developing Applications with Oracle Applications Express' training offered by DBCON. I am a newbie to software development eLearning; my colleague, however, is a highly-experienced developer who has experienced various teaching methods over the years. We were both duly impressed with DBCON efforts.

I think the part I enjoyed the most was the homework. I have been on a few training courses over the last 20 years, and usually you leave the class or session with nothing to do until the next class. Not so with the DBCON training - they very wisely have developed their training course to cover the concepts with examples during the class, then follow up with the same concepts and examples within the tutorial package, which then expands the concepts you have learned with more examples.

On the whole I believe I learned more through this course than pretty well any other training course I have been on. I was so impressed I bought the second part of the training, 'Advanced Oracle Application Express Training' myself. Turns out my company is going to pay anyways, but I would have taken the course even if they were not paying.

If you are looking for some training that won't eat up your whole day, and let's you take the class where ever you have high-speed Internet, then DBCON is the provider you want to investigate.

the best book (for Apex)

Go out right now and get 'Pro Oracle Application Express', by John Edward Scott and Scott Spendolini. It is published by Apress. I picked it up for $39.99 (CAN) from chapters.ca a while ago and it is worth every cent. More than that actually, so I feel I got a great deal.

Or, you can sign up for DBCON's excellent training courses; they will send you the book in PDF format. Personally, I like reading books made of paper still, but having it in PDF format means I can share with coworkers and keep my 'real' copy in pristine shape.

extremely useful APEX titbit

This is one of the most useful things I have found while using the SQL Workshop. I am not an oracle expert by any means, and sometimes I find their error messages, for the most part, useless. I discovered something so brainlessly simple it saddens me I didn't think of it myself.

Open the workshop, select 'SQL Commands' and type in the following query:

select * from user_errors;

Save this query with whatever name you want.

Next time you get something really cryptic, like

PL/SQL: Compilation unit analysis terminated

Open the query and run it. It will give you much more useful information.

maxapex.com pulled through

Looks like maxapex.com pulled through for me. I received my log on details earlier today and gave it a whirl. It all works! I will have to start developing something tonight after work. Will post later.

apex hosting on the web

I have found a site that ostensibly hosts APEX apps for free. I am waiting for an email with details of my account. You don't get much (5 MB db space, 1 user, 1 workspace) but it's enough to practice on. Plus if you are mocking-up an app for a prospective client you don't have to host through your own web site, or put your development box in your DMZ.

Check them out here.

Evil LDAP Trickery

Before you even try to use LDAP authentication between APEX and Microsoft's Active Directory, you need to remember that MSAD is NOT standard. Do not, repeat, do not use a DN structure such as DN=userid, OU=people, DC=your, DC=domain, DC=com. The DN Microsoft's AD wants is domain\userid. Very VERY frustrating.

Oracle Application Express 3.1.1

I've recently been working with the Oracle Applications Express 3.1.1 development tool provided free with Oracle's 10g and up database product. It is pretty cool. Not being a DBA or a web developer, but also not being wholly ignorant of either, has not prevented me from creating some pretty useful tools at work. The best part is that you can create 'apps' from spreadsheets, which is very useful.

Once you start messing around with it you start to see how it works, and you can really expand on what you have done. For example, you can create your own javascript functions and implement them directly with buttons etc. And you can reference application variables, constants easily.

Go here ---> http://apex.oracle.com