Apex presentations available for download

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If you could not make it to ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009, held in Monterey last June, you can still watch a lot of cool Oracle Application Express presentations covering many different facets of this framework, by downloading the powerpoint slides or the PDF equivalent, as reported by David Peake (David, you still owe me that Apex T-Shirt!)
This is also a great opportunity to catch up with some missing sessions, as i am going to do, owing to the abundance of interesting sessions running at the same time.
There are still a few missing download links, but they should become available over time.

A snapshot of the current listing is given below:


See more articles about Oracle Application Express or download tools and utilities.

Kaleidoscope 2009 highlights

Another great conference has just been archived and i must say i really had a good time at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009.

Can you believe it?
I even swam with Tom Kyte, but he didn't know i was a fan of his, so i preferred to not bother him with my silly questions about the optimizer while he was peacefully floating in the pool at the hotel.
This bizarre coincidence was caused by the fact that most people were staying at the Hyatt, whereas me (and Tom as a matter of fact) were at the Monterey Beach Resort.

Now, seriously, it was a great "happening", especially for the oracle apex fans, with the exception of a couple of sessions presented by an Italian dude...

Unfortunately, as happened at OOW 2008, there were just too many promising sessions and it was really hard to pick one, especially when you are interested in multiple technologies, like PL/SQL, Oracle Application Express and XML, so i ended up attending only one non-apex related session, a funny presentation of Tom about Database worst practices where, fortunately, i discovered that we share the same opinions: swallowing exceptions in the WHEN OTHERS clause or installing multiple database instances on the same production server are not the best ideas you can have.


Favorite Apex presentations (in random order) were those of John Scott (Increasing Scalability with Oracle Application Express), Scott Spadafore (Apex Security Essentials), Joel Kallmann (Effectively Managing an Application Express instance using the Oracle Database Resource Manager), Mike Hichwa (Oracle Application Express 4.0) and Scott Spendolini (Extreme Makeover Apex Edition).

And for what concerns myself, it could have been worse, but it could also have been better, at any rate, the brave ones can download my two presentations and a white paper from my company's site.

The only real complaint i have is with Monterey's weather in late June.
How come it so cold?!?!


For most of the time it was cloudy, on a couple of days there was even a thick layer of fog lingering on top of downtown Monterey.


We came to spend some hours on the beach, but we ended up sipping the traditional hot clam chowder in a bread bowl at one of fisherman's wharf's restaurants, wrapped in wind-resistant jackets bought in an emergency in local shops.


Well, in the end the clam chowder was really yummy and also the car i rented wasn't too bad, just a bit aggressive when pushing down the pedal...


But it was the right car for strolling through the posh streets of Carmel, the town where Clint Eastwood was mayor until some time ago. Indeed i went there with the idea of having lunch at Hog's breath Inn (what a picturesque name!), Clint's cozy restaurant, but after looking at the menu, i had to choose from eating a Dirty Harry fillet mignon or refilling the tank.
I chose the latter option and downgraded my lunch to a hamburger at Friar Tuck's.

Next time I'll definitely rent a less eccentric car, some energy-friendly pickup like this one i spotted in Phoenix:

I leave the reader with the task of finding out what's true and what's a joke ;-)

Preparing for ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009

Although i am not used to make shameless promotion of myself, i am glad to inform anyone who may be interested in Oracle seminars and conventions that i am going to present two papers at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 that will be held in Monterey, California on June 20-25, 2009.

I am especially happy because both papers were accepted after an intensive selection process according to the figures reported on the ODTUG site, so i cannot hide the fact that i am really proud to have been chosen for presenting at Kaleidoscope 2009.

If you look at the abstracts page may be you find just one entry against my name, but i'v got an email later informing that i am also expected to present a second paper.

Here are the abstracts of the two presentations:

Title: Oracle Application Express Supporting Objects

Abstract: Apex supporting objects scripts make easy for the developer to deploy an application in a new environment or ship a self-installing apex application to end-users.
It is important to understand each supporting object component and see how it affects the installation or upgrade process. The modularity of installation scripts allows a developer to subdivide the tasks in several steps and take advantage of PL/SQL procedures for executing complex checks. The goal of this session is to identify who does what and when, taking into consideration the current limitations of this tool.

Title: Oracle Application Express and Schema design guidelines

Abstract: Apex is a fantastic tool for creating web applications quickly out of excel spreadsheet or existing schema objects. Indeed it's even too quick as most developers probably do not pay the required attention to the schema design! In this session i will go through the various table types, user defined objects, packages vs procedures, regular views and materialized views, synonyms and triggers, to make it clear why one approach is better than an another in certain situations. Finally i'll also briefly mention oracle built-in packages whose existence sometimes certain developers simply ignore, including myself of course ;-)

There are a lot of interesting presentations covering various areas, hopefully i'll be able to attend most of them without having to "toss the coin" as i had to do at OOW 2008.

I'll see you in Monterey!

and the winner is...

Believe it or not, it looks like i won one of the available sessions for presenting at Oracle Open World 2008.
The full list of winners can be found at the Oracle Open World blog.

So, it turns out that on Monday, September 22, i'll be conducting a demonstration on how to effectively use Oracle Application Express and DBMS_PROFILER to analyze PL/SQL source code, as anticipated in a previous posting.

In the meanwhile i am collecting some real-life scenarios, especially from manufacturing plants, where, for performance reasons, the usage of DBMS_PROFILER for tuning the applications is not just an option, but it's a true necessity.

I really appreciated the support of friends and acquaintances who made this possible.

Thank you all!
Flavio

Are you ready for Oracle Open World 2008?

I don't know if you have plans to attend Oracle Open World this year (San Francisco, September 21-25), but here is the session i proposed on Oracle Mix, a cool website where everybody dealing with Oracle can share ideas and information.

In short, I'd be glad to show a presentation about analyzing PL/SQL procedures with an Apex application, however this is going to happen only if the proposed session gets enough votes and there are already some excellent presentations out there with slightly higher scores and outstanding experts as presenters, so it's going to be tough to get a slot.

Last week Oracle extended the ballot until mid of July, so, if you like the idea and want to support the initiative, sign in or register on Oracle Mix and vote for the sessions you'd like to see during the event, including mine of course ;-)

See more articles about Oracle Application Express or download tools and utilities.