One of the big ‘limitations’ with APEX is that it is proprietary, after all who wants to go to the hassle of installing Oracle just because you want to use Oracle functionality.

Here at APEX Evangelists, we have been busy toiling away for the last few months and we’re pleased to announce that we have finally managed to port APEX to run on Microsoft SQLServer and MySQL.

Now you can use the full power of Application Express regardless of which backend database you’re using.

We have issued a couple of press releases about the product, which we are calling “Application Espresso”. Product Manager for Espresso, Dimitri Gielis was heard to say “It’s AWESOME”, whilst John Scott was quoted by Time Magazine as saying “It’s a major step forward for Database Independence, whilst maintaining a synergistic paradigm shift for adaptive conceptualization of Web 3.0″.

We are currently looking for Beta testers, so drop us a mail if you’re interested.

Last week APEX Evangelists held the second European APEX Training Days event in London (the first event was held in Belgium and was so successful we decided to continue the theme and move to another major European city).

The course was a 3-day Advanced class covering many different topics related to APEX, from Best Practices, through the APEX Dictionary through to APEX 3.1 New Features (and beyond).

The attendees had a variety of backgrounds and were using APEX in many different ways and it was really interesting to discuss what they had (and had not) been able to do in APEX. Obviously the things they had not been able to do we took as a challenge to try and show them how they could do it!

We always try to make our training events nice and informal, so that the attendees always know they can ask us questions to either clarify something that we discussed in a presentation, or even just ask us a pop-question if they bump into us in the elevator first thing in the morning (it happened and I ended up missing my floor because I was engrossed in the problem!).

One thing we keep noticing about people who use APEX is that they’re so passionate about the technology and eager to learn new ways to use it. The challenge for us was to show them things they weren’t aware of, or to solve some of the problems they had.

We also try to keep the training interesting (always helps!) and interactive, so we always make time for questions, include dedicated open Q&A time (which from the feedback was greatly appreciated, as an example Dimitri sat and demonstrated how to solve a problem that someone had been trying to solve for a while in their own system).

We also held an APEX Quiz which went down very well (although it helped that we had some nice prizes to give out for the top 3 people!).

On wednesday evening we took the attendees out to a great little Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge called Sale e Pepe, the staff there were absolutely crazy, particularly the manager, but the food was amazing and it gave everyone a great chance to ‘bond’ even more. The only drawback to this of course was that I was the first to present on thursday morning (Dimitri managed to schedule that on the Agenda without me spotting it!).

Some particular highlights for me:

• One attendee told me it was the best course he’d ever been on (thanks Roger!), of course I then had to check it wasn’t the first course he’d been on! It is always amazing to hear feedback like that. Particularly when it comes from someone who is already using APEX on a daily basis.
• An attendee from the first training we held came back for the second one. That type of ‘vote of confidence’ really does help us to know we’re doing something useful!
• We managed to ‘re-unite’ a couple of attendees who hadn’t seen each other for close to 20 years, they looked at each other on the first morning at the Welcome Break and recognised each other (perhaps we should rename ourselves ‘APEX Friends Reunited?).
• Attendees asking us almost as soon as the course had ended, when the next one would be held…now that’s keen!

I really enjoyed last week and it’s particularly nice to see that the attendees are not only staying in touch with us after the training, but they’re also staying in touch with each other…the APEX community is indeed a friendly one!

It’s been a hectic week, I got the train back from London on friday afternoon (a public holiday here in the UK, which was fun…let’s just say that the UK does not manage to make public transport run on public holidays very well).

I have about 30 hours at home, before getting ready to fly out on Easter Sunday (another bad day to travel!) to do some more APEX Training, time to check those demos work again!

Once again, thank you to all who attended, it was a pleasure to meet you all.

We will be announcing the locations and dates of our next training sessions very shortly.

These last few weeks we have been doing some Beginner APEX training classes for some companies here in the UK (APEX is certainly becoming more popular here in the UK).

Now, I am quite risk averse when it comes to updating software, especially when I’m going to be demoing or training in the near future. However when APEX 3.1 became available a week ago (on the friday evening), I knew I had to download it and play around with it. I’d previously tried it out on the Beta evaluation provided by Oracle, however it’s still not the same as having it on your own machines.

My test upgrades went smoothly, but I also had a dilemma, did I dare risk using 3.1 for a training session I was doing on the monday (giving me just 48 hours or so to test it all worked nicely).

Well call me stupid or call me brave, but I decided that the risks were outweighed by the rewards and I decided to upgrade my ‘presentation’ instance to 3.1 (after taking a backup of course!).

Roll forward to monday and the start of the 3-day training session, it was my first time to demo (in the wild, so to speak) the new 3.1 features to an audience. Bear in mind this was beginner level training to people who hadn’t even used APEX before, so as far as they were concerned *all* the features were new.

However, I needn’t have worried, APEX 3.1 was extremely stable and the new features in 3.1 (particularly interactive reports and the declarative blob support) went down extremely well with the attendees.

Once again, by the middle of the 3-day course a couple of the attendees had downloaded XE and one person was trying to upgrade their XE to use APEX 3.1 (they ran into a few problems but I helped to sort those out).

By the way, I put ‘First APEX 3.1 Training’ with a trailing question mark, since as far as I’m aware this was probably the first training course which 3.1 has been used on (outside of some of the demos done by the Oracle team themselves of course!).

So, I can rest easy that nothing could possibly go wrong during my next training session in London (hint of sarcasm there, since to assume nothing will go wrong when you’re planning to do that many live demos would be plain self-delusion!).

If you didn’t catch it yet, the Oracle team behind Application Express have been working hard (as always!) and have just released APEX 3.1

There are some incredibly cool features in 3.1, such as (from the SoD):

• Interactive reporting region types which natively integrate Web 2.0 features to filter, break, sort data, etc.
Improved PDF report layout
• Enhanced print attributes allowing for more control of PDF document structures
• Optional runtime-only installation, which will install the minimum number of database objects and grant the minimum number of privileges to run Application Express applications in a production environment
• PL/SQL API to manage a runtime installation of Application Express
• Documented and supported Application Express JavaScript libraries
• Improved calendar region type supporting AJAX requests
• New PL/SQL API to send attachments in e-mail
• Enhanced integration with Oracle SQL Developer for MS Access to Application Express migration

I’ve just tried a couple of test installs and have it up and running on my laptop, so far it’s delivered everything it promised!

I’ve been helping out providing some on-site beginner level Apex training for a company here in the UK over the last few weeks and it’s been quite a nice change for me since I’m usually called in for Advanced Level Training instead.

None of the attendees were what I’d call ‘Oracle Developers’ or indeed Developers at all, they were (self-confessed) Microsoft Access and Excel addicts.

Well, as anyone who has used Apex before knows, Apex makes it extremely easy to migrate your existing data from these tools. However, just migrating isn’t enough, after all who wants to move away from a tool that already does what they want to another tool that (at best) might just do exactly the same job.

So, my job as Trainer is to show off all the nice features in Apex (and the Oracle database) that not only makes the idea of moving to Apex attractive, but actually makes it into a ‘why didn’t I know about Apex sooner?’ type of reaction. Needless to say that after using Apex for as long as I have (and in as many different ways as I have) I have lots of things up my sleeve that should manage to convince even the most sceptical die-hard Access or Excel lover.

Of course, I never claim that Apex is a silver-bullet (no tool is) and it certainly isn’t suitable in every case or scenario, however I’ve found that by demonstrating the features of the product itself you are more likely to show that one feature that each person in the audience has wanted to use or that they think will be useful to them.

In other words, 100 powerpoint slides of “Apex Good, Access Bad” won’t work, it just sounds like propaganda. However letting people see the tool in action (At Apex Evangelists we’re big advocates of live demos) they can see whether the features you’re talking about are really as easy to use as you say they are.

So, what has this got to do with Earthquakes? Well for those of you reading this outside of the UK, last week we had an Earthquake here in the UK (yes really…it does happen here occasionally). The day after the earthquake I was talking to one of the training attendees and he said he was awake when the quake hit (around 1am) because he’d been installing Oracle XE on his home PC to use Application Express. Now bear in mind that this was someone who hadn’t even heard of Apex 2 days before and had actually stayed up until 1am in the morning to download and install it (I don’t mean it takes a long time to download or install by the way! Just the fact that he was interested enough to stay up till the early hours to do it).

When you stand up in-front of a group of people and Present, there is almost no better reward than hearing back that you’ve said something that interested them (or at least interested some of them).

I always do a quick straw-poll when I do these types of things, here are the results (it was just a quick hands-up exercise) -

• At the beginning of the one course only 1 out of the 12 attendees had even heard of Apex
• After day 2 (of a 3 day course), 2 people had installed Apex on their home PC’s
• By the final day, 4 out of 12 people had installed Apex on the home PC
• By the final day, 9 out of 12 people said it was ‘extremely likely’ they would use Apex as part of their daily work rather than Excel/Access (obviously where appropriate)
• Of the 3 people who said it was not ‘extremely likely’ the main reason they gave was that they would first want more training (which was good, as they weren’t just simply saying ‘no’, they wanted to evaluate the tool more

With Apex 3.1 just round the corner, my job of convincing people to use Apex is going to get even easier!

A few days ago we released our agenda to the people coming to the AE European Oracle Application Express Training Days.

This training will be held in London in March 18th-20th 2008. It’s not a beginners training, more an advanced one, although “advanced” is difficult to measure.

There are still a few places left, so if you have been looking for some Advanced APEX training by some of the most passionate APEX people around then sign up quickly as places are limited.

It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since I was presenting at UKOUG and I’m already starting to prepare for the next set of conferences.

So far this year I’m going to be presenting at IOUG Collaborate in Denver (April) and also at ODTUG in New Orleans (June).

At both conferences I’m going to be presenting on the same topic:

• Application Express Hints, Tips & Best Practices.

No, I’m not doing the same one twice because I’m lazy ;), it’s because it’s a topic I hear people mention again and again (coincidentally mentioned only last week on H.Tonguç YILMAZ’s blog)

It can be difficult when you’re starting out in any development environment to know the ‘best’ ways of doing things, so lots of newbies to APEX will hopefully find this topic interesting. For the more seasoned APEX developers, I’m throwing in some hints and tips that not everyone may be aware of (in other words I’m hoping to show something that will be useful to APEX developers of any skill level).

For those of you not attending either the Collaborate or ODTUG events, I am writing a Whitepaper on the topic which I hope to be able to make public.

Of course, the first people to get to see this topic, will be the people attending the APEX Evangelists European Training event in London (March), there are still a few places left so if you’re looking for some advanced APEX training then sign-up here!

Well, the craze at the moment is the whole ‘8 things’ thing and whilst I heartily agree with Howard about the potential this has for making the aggregators work overtime, it would be rude (and very bah-humbug) to not take my turn after being tagged by Tim Hall.

So my turn for 8 things about me -

• I’m a very keen scuba diver and was taught to scuba dive by a french ex-Special Forces instructor, my first dive-buddy was an ex-KGB agent (seriously).
• I’ve almost been ‘lost at sea’ twice whilst diving. The first time the dive boat hit some shallow rocks cracking the hull (luckily we made it back to shore before the flooding got too severe), the second time due to strong currents we surfaced well away from the dive boat and spent the next few hours bobbing around aimlessly waiting to be found.
• As a child I always wanted to be an Airforce Pilot, right up till the first time I saw a computer, the rest is history as they say…
• I took a year out before going to University and worked on a building site. I loved the job immensely, however working outdoors in Newcastle in winter when the rain is so heavy you can’t see 10 feet ahead has now made me appreciate just how ‘cushy’ working in an office is, despite how much we ‘IT people’ might complain about our jobs, we should be thankful that we can still feel our fingers and toes when it gets cold outside.
• When I went to University, I was the first ever male to register in the Hall of Residence where I stayed as it was previously an all-female Hall and it was the first year they were allowing men to stay (from memory around 300 women and 18 men).
• The only food that I absolutely hate is turnip. Can’t stand the stuff, you can’t make me change my mind on that one.
• I usually can’t watch old films that are in black & white, no matter how good they’re supposed to be.
• I proposed to my wife (or then fiance) in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles.

As Howard points out this is almost a pyramid scheme blogging craze, so there aren’t that many people for me to nominate as ‘next’, so rather than going for 8 people I’ll just go for two Flavio Casetta and Carl Backstrom it’s your turn!

A nice email popped into my Inbox today to let me know that the feedback results are in for the UKOUG 2007 conference at which I presented Debugging APEX Applications back in December (it seems so long ago now!).

I was in two minds whether to blog about my ‘results’, since on the one hand if the results were good it could be seen as ‘boasting’, on the other hand if the results were bad then it wouldn’t exactly spur anyone on to sign up for our Advanced APEX training in March next year!

However, I noticed that Marco Gralike has also blogged about his results, so at least I’m not the first (or only one!), plus I think it’s nice to nice to compare how you think it went with how the audience thought it went.

So, on with the results -

Main scores are:

• 1 - Poor
• 2 - Below Average
• 3 - Average
• 4 - Good
• 5 - Very Good
• 6 - Excellent

The Length of Session scores are:

• 1 - Too short
• 2 - Just right,
• 3 - Too long.

My Scores:

• Topic evaluation average: 5.8
• Content evaluation average: 5.8
• Presentation Skills evaluation average: 5.8
• Quality of Slides evaluation average: 5.7
• Value of Presentation evaluation average: 5.8
• Length of Session evaluation average: 1.52

I was amazed at the feedback scores, I felt the presentation went well (overall I felt confident doing it and there were no major hiccups during it besides one demo which I hopefully managed to ‘workaround’ without anyone noticing too much!), but it is great to see that the audience felt it went very well too.

I’ve blogged a couple of times before that I find it very difficult to sometimes tell if the material I’m presenting is useful or whether the levels is pitched right for the audience and really feedback forms like this are pretty much the best way to find that out, since people can be much more honest in an ‘anonymous form’ than the sometimes are to your ‘face’ afterwards.

As for the Length of session score (1.52, remember that’s out of 3 not out of 6 unlike the other scores!), I was actually happy to get that too considering that originally this was a 90 minute presentation that I had to chop down to fit into 60 minutes. I had a couple of choices here I could have either left out some of the sub-topics I was covering, or I could have reduced the level of detail I went into for each sub-topic.

In the end I decided that I couldn’t really lose any sections, since I wanted to cover as many different debugging tools and methods that you can use in APEX, but went for the ‘reduce the level of detail slightly’ approach. However I was still being extremely optimistic in trying to fit in all the information in the time allowed. I actually just overran by about 1 minute (which was about 20 minutes less than I thought I’d overrun by!).

Some of the feedback comments were very nice too including -

• “Loads of useful tips”
• “Best presentation I have seen all week. Many thanks.”
• “Fantastic - great debug tips. More, more, more.”
• “Excellent presentation.”

They weren’t all good though! I’m slightly intrigued by the comment -

• “Felt that he could have he could have been more forward facing.”

I’m not entirely sure what to take from that one!

So, all in all, I’m extremely pleased with that, now I just need to prepare for the next set of presentations (Collaborate 08 and the APEX Evangelists Advanced APEX Training in March). They come around so quickly!

We’re here already, final day of UKOUG! It’s gone really quick, all that preparation and then it’s over until next year.

It was quite a ‘lazy’ start to the day, checking out of the hotel and loading up the car with bags, then heading over to Peter Lorenzen’s session on “How to make your APEX Application Secure”. I hadn’t seen this session before and it was full of good tips on using the features available within APEX to secure your app.

Peter had a full room and once again I heard a couple of people leaving saying things like “I didn’t know you could do that”, so Peter definitely did a good job.

It was also a good chance for Dimitri, Peter and myself to have a chat after having not met Peter before UKOUG (but having corresponded with him via email/Apex forums etc).

After some lunch, it was time to make a difficult decision, i.e. which of the final sessions would be my final session at UKOUG. It was difficult because Jonathan Lewis and Steven Feuerstein were both presenting at the same time.

I’ve met Steven a few times (we created a simple APEX app for his new book) and he’s a superb presenter. However I decided to go to Jonathan Lewis’s session, as it just so happens I’ve spent the last couple of days wrestling with some queries and went to his session for some inspiration.

I’ve also seen Jonathan present a few times now and he is an absolute master at it, personally I like the more technical types of presentations and this didn’t disappoint at all. His session was titled “Optimisation Through Understanding” and whilst I wouldn’t even pretend to have understood everything Jonathan covered, it was perhaps one of the most instructive 2 hours of Oracle learning I’ve ever had.

All in all, an excellent first UKOUG for me, I’ll definitely try and go next year too.