SQL Query (return colon separated value)

Did you know there is a new computation type in APEX - SQL Query (return colon separated value)? Probably not, because there are many other "sexier" features. However this "small" feature is realy cool. Before, you needed to do several steps if you wanted to compute your multiselect list, shuttle item, checkbox or a radio button:

1. DECLARE an array,
2. SELECT * BULK COLLECT INTO array
3. use APEX_UTIL package to convert that array into a string
4. RETURN that string

With APEX 4 you don't need to do that any more. You just do a normal select and whatever it returns will be concatenated into a colon delimited string. That's it.

New Apex Blog

My colleague and friend Linh Dinh from Munich recently started to post about his experience with APEX. You can find his blog here http://www.dinh.de. Linh is a knowledgable and smart person with a lot of Java background. His first contact with APEX was in March this year when we started with a project for one of my customers. He immediately liked it and has made a huge progress since then. Linh is blogging in German and therefore his postings are especially interesting for the German APEX community.

Oracle Apex 4.0 Training: New Features

Because of overlapping with the OOW agenda, we decided to reschedule our training to 4th and 5th of October 2010.

Wir (Dietmar und ich) haben den Termin für unsere Schulung um zwei Wochen verschoben. Die Schulung findet nun am 04.10 bzw. 05.10.2010. Der Grund war die Überschneidung mit dem OOW Termin. In diesem Training möchten wir folgende Punkte ansprechen:

- Überblick der neuen Features, was ist alles neu
- Der Umgang mit Websheets, wie kann man die neuen Wiki-ähnliche Funktionalitäten sinnvoll nutzen
- Dynamic Actions, wie man AJAX Funktionalität deklarativ (ohne zu programmieren) in seinen Applikationen einsetzt
- Erweiterbarkeit von APEX über Plug-Ins, benutzerdefinierten Elementtypen und Regionen
- Verbesserungen der Tabular Forms, insbesondere die Validierungen und die Unterstützung zusätzlicher Elementtypen
- Die Verwendung der neuen Elementtypen
- Verbesserungen der mächtigen interaktiven Berichte mit komplexeren Filtern, Gruppierungen und das Abonnement von Benachrichtigungen
- Team Development, das Projekt direkt mit APEX managen
- Verbesserungen im Application Builder
- Neue Möglichkeiten der Chart-Engine sowie neue Diagrammtypen (GANTT und Kartendarstellungen)
- Web Services, deklarative Unterstützung von REST-Webservices
- Administration, Vereinfachungen in der Administration sowie im Deployment von Applikationen
- Umgang mit dem neuen APEX Listener

Alle Details findet ihr hier:

http://www.opal-consulting.de

Highlight Selected Row

This may be an a bit old topic. However I am getting emails from time to time asking how to do that. This example shows how to easily highlight a selected row in a report and make it persistant while reloading / submitting the page.

APEX 4.0 - Standard Tabular Forms and Select Lists

I just noticed that the bug I first time saw in the first beta version of 4.0 is still present - see this forum posting and especially this one. If you have a wizard generated tabular form with a select list and you hit the F5 button to reload the page, your select list values will change. This happens only if you use FF. With IE instead it works fine. See this example:

http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=31517:11

If you are already using 4.0 in production, you should do something to avoid unexpected results. I am sure that the Apex-Team will correct this bug with the first patch for 4.0.





The actual workarround, as posted in the second thread dealing with this isssue is to switch the "Autocomplete" to "off" in the page attributes.

Save Changes before Exiting

One of my customers wants to replace some Forms applications using APEX. One of the critical issues was the possibility to warn the user before exiting the existing form (switching tabs, closing browser window or tab or simply using the back button). In this example in my Demo Application I created a proof of concept using some older threads and demos. The solution is quite neat since there is almost no hardcoding and it works in every case while trying to move from the form. One of the important things was how to get that button for saving changes work, so it doesn't trigger the alert but does save the changes.

Tabular Form - Preserve Changes

In our last training (08.03-10.03.2010) there was an interesting question on how to preserve the changes made in a tabular form while paginating through it. The requirement was also to save all the changes made independant of the visible set of rows. This problem can be solved using apex collections. This page in my Demo Application holds a working example including the full description of the code.

Preselect Select List Values while Adding Rows

This example is showing how to preselect values in a tabular form select list while adding rows.

Preventing Duplicate Entries in a Tabular Form

This may sound trivial but the question is one of the frequently asked question in the forum. I just created an example showing how to check a tabular form on duplicate entries prior to saving the new added rows. You will find the example here. Try adding some rows and enter an already existing name for the ename.

APEX Training in Bensheim - die Uhr tickt

Liebe APEX-ler, auch dieses Jahr organisieren Dietmar und ich ein weiteres Training zum Thema APEX aus der Praxis. Der Termin ist 08.03 - 10.03 im Aleehotel Europa in Bensheim an der Bergstrasse. Wenn ihr auf der Suche nach einem APEX-Training seid, in dem nicht nach einem empno, deptno Muster unterrichtet wird und wo der Dozent APEX nicht nur aus den Unterlagen kennt, sondern in komplexen Projekten selbst eingesetzt hat, dann seid ihr bei uns richtig. Eine Anmeldung zum Training findet ihr hier, auf Opal-Consulting.de.

Same procedure as every year - APEX Stammtisch

Dietmar aust und ich werden am 22.02.2010 um 19 Uhr unseren jährlichen APEX Stammtisch in Siegburg organisieren. Falls ihr Lust habt mit uns und anderen Teilnehmern über APEX zu reden so könnt ihr euch hier anmelden.

My (our) first book

As Dietmar Aust already wrote in his blog, our first book was published yesterday. We are currently the No. 1 under Oracle books on amazon.de. Although, this is changing every hour. The book is currently available only in German. Our goal was to write a book about the best practices we have developed through the years.



Merry Christmas to all of you.

Denes Kubicek

APEX Kurs März 2010

Dietmar und ich werden einen weiteren Kurs im März 2010 organisieren. In Kürze werden wir die Informationen darüber auf unserer Seite veröffentlichen.

Update Multiple Values in a Tabular Form using PopUp

In this posting and the corresponding example I showed how to compute columns in a tabular form row using a select list. Sometimes you can have a requirement to use more than one parameter (configurator) to do a preselection. In that case you would need to use a popup window. I was asked how that could be done and I created a slightly modified example in my demo application. The only difference is that:

- you need to tell the popup page the row number you would like to compute
- you need to call the ajax function out of the popup window using window.opener function

The Power of the Apex Repository

We all know about the apex views but hardly use them. Today, I answered two questions in the oracle Forum where the solution was related to the apex views. The first question was on how to create a report with all the csv links for all the reports in an application:

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=952151

The second question was on how to provide a generic solution for a page help functionality:

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=952469

Basically, the usage of apex views provides a simple two-step solution which doesn't require any maintanance.

In my demo application, you will find the corresponding examples:

Report on all csv links

Help page

Try it out.

Renaming Page Items

I am using Firefox for development of Apex applications. I have my builder open in one tab and the application in the next one. As soon as I make a change I would switch to the application tab and see the results after reloading or submiting the page. That is quite practical and saves a lot of clicks. Couple of days ago I was developing an application and had to rename a page item. This item was involved in some page computations and after renaming it the page didn't work the way I expected. I spent probably an hour trying to understand why. I changed my code couple of times withouth success. Then it came to my mind that I had seen this before. I logged out, logged in again and my code suddenly worked. So, this is just a small tip to first logout after renaming page items. It could save you a lot of time (and nerves) if you remember it.

Validations using Ajax

I posted about this in October 2008 but in different context. This example in my Demo Application shows how to use Ajax for item validation. I use this method in some cases where I can't allow the page to be submited but have to inform the user before he hits the submit button. Also, if user enters something invalid, it will overwrite that with a previous valid value.

Become a better Apex Developer

We are just under 1 month away from the next training, kicking off 21st of September in Aleehotel Europa in Bensheim. It is time for the "late" birds to sign up for the training.

Unser Training beginnt am 21.09.2009 in Bensheim - Allehotel Europa. Es ist Zeit sich anzumelden. Es sind diesmal einige Plätze frei im Vergleich zu den letzten Trainings. Möglicherweise sind das die Auswirkungen dieser Krise, von der ständig erzählt wird. Und wenn es tatsächlich eine geben sollte, dann ist das die Zeit, die man nutzen sollte nach vorne zu schauen und sich für die guten Zeiten vorzubereiten. Also, meldet euch...

Search and Edit Form with Report

It is easy to create a form with a report in order to drill-down and modify or create records. It would be great if Apex would have a wizard for creating a form which would give us a possibility not only to edit and create records but also to search on those. In this small example in my Demo Application you can see how to do that manually. This example shows several things:

- how to create a manual form
- how to create a manual fetch process
- how to ensure data integrity using checksum
- how to create a form for editing and searching data
- how to drill down on a record set returned by a search without loosing it



Enjoy.

Use Lightbox 2 in Apex

Following this thread I was wondering how easy it is to incorporate the Lightbox 2 plugin into Apex on apex.oracle.com. You can see the results here in my Demo Application.