ODTUG Leadership Program

ODTUG has long been recognized as an outstanding source for the technical content Oracle professionals desire, but that’s only half of the story. We’re providing our members with yet another avenue to add to their skills and increase their value to their employer or client. ODTUG is pleased to open enrolment for the fourth class of the ODTUG Leadership Program

I've had the opportunity to work with some of the classes and individuals from the Leadership Program and have heard some amazing stories on how this program changed peoples lives and carriers!

If you, or someone you know, is interested I encourage you to submit an application. Applications must be submitted by August 14th so hurry up!

ODTUG Election

If you were at Oracle Open World a few weeks ago you may have missed that the ODTUG Board of Directors election results were posted.

The newly elected directors are:

• Opal Alapat
• Danny Bryant
• Gary Crisci
• Natalie Delemar
• Martin D'Souza

I first must thank all the people that voted for me again this year. It means a lot that I have the support of the APEX and Oracle communities. 

They're a few board members who will not be returning next year. They all have done a lot for ODTUG and its members.

• Monty Latiolais
• Monty has been the President of ODTUG for the past few years. He's done an amazing job leading the organization. Monty's lasting legacy at ODTUG will be the Leadership Program. He took a risk trying it out and it has been a very big success helping develop leaders within the ODTUG community.
• David Schleis
• David has helped re-energize the traditional developer and DBA communities. Over the past two years he helped merged them into one united "database" community. I look forward to David to continue help out with the database community in the coming years.
• Mia Urman
• Mia has been instrumental with helping foster the ADF community and lead the global outreach program. Both of these areas require a lot of time and effort, all which Mia happy put in. If you're going to be at DOAG in a few weeks look for Mia who be representing ODTUG.

I also need to say a special thank you to the current board for supporting me over the past year. Last year was a very difficult time for me personally and they all stepped up and supported me along the way. This is something I will never forget and will always be thankful for.

As ODTUG has a six year term limit for directors, this will be my last two years. I look forward to making them as good as the first four. If you have any feedback or things you'd like to see happen within the community please let me know.

- Martin

ODTUG Technical Journal - Authors Wanted

If you've ever thought of starting your own blog or wanted to write a detailed article on some cool APEX or Oracle feature but didn't know where to start, now's your big chance! The ODTUG Technical Journal is looking for some new articles and we'd like to see articles from first time contributors.

Signing up is easy. Simply email Karen Cannell (kcannell@odtug.com) and let her know that you're interested in writing an article for the journal. Then you can work out a schedule with her. After that, all you need to do is write the article, Karen will take care of the rest.

This is a great opportunity to get your name out there and also promote what you and your organization have been been working on. I'm looking forward to seeing some great content from the APEX community.

OOW 15 Presentations

If you're attending Oracle OpenWorld 2015 this year here are a few links for presentations I'd recommend:

•  Open Source and Oracle Application Express [UGF4096]
• Sunday Oct 25 8:00am - Moscone South Room 300
• Martin Giffy D'Souza
• If you've ever thought about using open source applications or want to become more involved with open source development for your Oracle and APEX applications this presentation is for you.
• The Objects of My Affection: Deploying Your APEX Applications [UGF10050]
• Sunday Oct 25 10:00am - Moscone South Room 300
• Francis Mignault
• Learn how to deploy your applications for testing, QA, and production. Also learn how supporting objects work, and see the new Oracle Application Express 5 features that will help you package and deploy your applications.
• ODTUG Sunday Sessions
• There's a lot of great presentations. Readers of this blog will most likely be focused on the PL/SQL and APEX sessions.

On Tuesday night there will be the APEX meetup. Don't get their too late since it fills up pretty quickly. We'll be in the basement.

I'll also be filming some Periscope interviews for ODTUG. If you can't attend OOW then you'll want to follow the ODTUG twitter account. This will be the first time ODTUG has ever done this and we'd appreciate your feedback. If there's someone you'd like to see interviewed during the conference please let me know below by leaving a comment on this post.

I look forward to seeing everyone there!

ODTUG 2015 Election - Please Vote

The ODTUG Board of Directors election is now officially open. Paid ODTUG members can cast their ballot between Oct 6th - Oct 27th. If you are a paid member you will get an email with the link, username, and voter id.

I am running for the ODTUG Board of Directors and I am looking for your support to continue to help the ODTUG community for another two years.

Here is my official campaign statement:

Over the past four years, I have had the privilege to represent the Oracle APEX Community as a Director for ODTUG. I have made the decision to run again this year for the ODTUG Board and am looking for your support in doing so.

During my four-year tenure, I have been involved in several committees within ODTUG that have helped bring conferences around the world, improved marketing initiatives, and organized developer contests. 

I have been able to build strong relationships with other ODTUG Board Members, Oracle employees, and many developers in the APEX community. These relationships have allowed me to be a liaison between all three groups and help relay ideas and opportunities to the appropriate parties. I hope to continue to be able to facilitate open communication over the next two years.

I am looking for your vote to continue as an ODTUG Board Member to represent developers within one of the world’s largest Oracle user groups. Thank you in advance for your support.

Thank you in advance,

Martin

APEX OOW 2015 Meetup

Each year the Oracle APEX community gets together at Oracle Open World (OOW) to have a few beers and catch up. This is a great informal event and its your chance to network with a lot of people in the APEX community and meet some of the gurus and members of the core APEX development team.

We'll be having the annual APEX OOW Meetup at Johnny Foleys on Tuesday, October 27th at 7:30 onwards. We've been their a few times now and it is a really fun night since they have duelling pianos later on in the evening. Don't show up too late or it may be tough to get in.

243 O'Farrell Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

ODTUG will also be giving away some cool APEX swag!

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

Martin

ODTUG Oracle Blogs - Now on Twitter

A while ago, ODTUG put a heavy emphasis on communities. As a result, 6 main communities were created: APEX, BI, EPM, Development, DBA, and ADF. Each of these communities have their own site dedicated to them along with a blog aggregator (click on each of their titles for the appropriate page).

The blogs contain an amazing amount of content from the entire Oracle community. The authors include Oracle ACE (Associates, ACEs, and Directors), Oracle employees, speakers from all the major conferences (including Kscope), book authors, etc.

Up until last week the only ways to take advantage of the blog aggregator were to go to the appropriate ODTUG community site or subscribe to the respective RSS feed. Starting today you can subscribe to the following Twitter accounts to get a message in your feed each time a new article is posted for your community.

• APEX: @orclapexblogs
• BI: @orclbiblogs
• EPM: @orclepmblogs
• Development: @orcldevblogs
• DBA: @orcldbablogs
• ADF: @orcladfblogs

Each tweet will also contain the community's appropriate hashtag. ODTUG has the complete hashtag listing here: http://www.odtug.com/hashtag If you're new to Twitter, following your appropriate hashtag can be a quick way to find some excellent and helpful content.

Some tweets will contain the author's Twitter handle (via a @mention). We're currently in the process of updating all the twitter handles for the authors in each community. If you write an article and don't see your Twitter handle show up, just reply to the appropriate Twitter account and we'll fix it.

As always, if you want to add your blog to the list, please email lauren@odtug.com.

Thanks to Adrian Png and Patrick Wolf for their ideas and patience getting this setup!

APEX 5.0 and KScope 14

A few weeks ago the Oracle APEX team released APEX 5.0 EA1 (Early Adopter). You can try the new version of APEX at ea.oracleapex.com.

I expect that the APEX team will release an EA2 and possible EA3 version before officially launching APEX 5.0 with the final release coming around June. Just to be clear, these are my personal estimates not any inside information.

Releasing APEX 5.0 in June would be perfect timing as it coincides with Kscope 14. The conference has a lot of talks specifically focused on APEX 5.0 from both the Oracle development team and some of the worlds leading experts on all things APEX. I think that this conference will be a great opportunity for people (both developers and managers) to learn about all the new features and get hands on experience with this latest version.

One of the unique aspects of Kscope is that you'll be able to easily talk to the Oracle APEX team, Oracle ACE and ACE Directors, and other experts in the community. These are the people that write the blogs, read the books, and do the webinars that you may have read/seen. You can sit down with them and get their advice on how to integrate 5.0 and leverage it to enhance your current applications and increase ROI.

I'll be giving a talk at Kscope 14 called "APEX 5.0 - New Features Highlights". It will cover some of the new aspects of APEX that will help both developers and the business. You can see all the Kscope 14 APEX abstracts here. If you're thinking of coming to the conference you should register soon as Early Bird rates end on March 25th.

Hope to see you at Kscope 14!

APEXposed en Montreal - Sept 10/11

This fall ODTUG will be in Montreal for the 2nd annual APEXposed conference. Like last year, there's a star-studded lineup of speakers including Oracle's Director of Software Development, APEX's product manager, and Oracle ACE and ACE Directors. The one difference compared with last year is that we have some local speakers from Montreal and Toronto.

Some of the presentations that I'm looking forward to are:

- Joel Kallman's (Oracle Director of Software Development) talk on APEX 5.0, giving us an inside look of what's coming up in the near future.
- David Peake's (APEX Product Manager) talk on how to leverage some of the new features in 12c with APEX.
- Roel Hartman's (Director at APEX Evangelists) presentation on building mobile applications in APEX.
- Steve Feuerstein's (Dell) keynote. I just talked to him about it, should be great!

And, as shameless plug, I'll be giving two talks: "Instrumenting your PL/SQL and APEX Applications" and "APEX Development Best Practices". I'm really excited about the talk on code instrumentation as I'll be highlighted some of the new features that I've integrated into the 2.0.0 version of Logger and also share some of the new upcoming features.

If you're interested and yet haven't already registered for the conference you're in luck. It's still not to late to sign up for this 2 day (September 10th and 11th) conference. To register simply go to http://www.odtug.com/apexposed and sign up.

See you in Montreal!

How My Family Solves Computer Problems

In my talk, How to be Create II, at ODTUG Kscope 11 I discussed what sometimes happens when users try to fix problems themselves. This is a video clip from my presentation on how my family tries to resolve computer problems.



And yes it is a true story. I got those emails from my family...

Thanks to Chris Hritzuk for recording this.

How to be Creative II - Presentation Slides

You can download the slides of the How to be Creative II presentation that I gave at ODTUG Kscope 11 from the following link: http://goo.gl/2MP9l Please note that the slides have been modified for handout purposes (i.e. not the exact same that I showed in the presentation).

The slides should also be updated soon on the ODTUG Kscope Scheduler: http://caat.odtug.com/ODTUG_registration_menu.html

APEX 4 + HTML 5 = Awesome: Presentation Slides

You can download the slides of the APEX 4 + HTML 5 = Awesome presentation that I gave last week at ODTUG Kscope 11 from the following link: http://goo.gl/vWW3Z Please note that the slides have been modified for handout purposes (i.e. not the exact same that I showed in the presentation).

The slides should also be updated soon on the ODTUG Kscope Scheduler: http://caat.odtug.com/ODTUG_registration_menu.html

I'll post the How to be Creative II slides in the next few days.

ODTUG KScope 11 - Recap

I had an amazing time in Long Beach CA last week for ODTUG Kscope 11. This was my fourth time attending the Kscope conference and I must say that the ODTUG committee, along with YCC, made it the best one yet!

Saturday
It all started for me on Saturday. Once I arrived in Long Beach I went to register right away. Along with registration (which went flawlessly thanks to Lauren) I had my picture taken with Crystal in the new social media lounge. Lori, from YCC, did an excellent job promoting social media at Kscope 11 and I think it was a huge success.

Sunday
Sunday was the symposium day. Not surprisingly I attended the APEX track which were presentations given by the Oracle APEX team on the upcoming 4.1 features in APEX. Mike Hichwa gave us a glimpse of some of the long term plans for APEX. There's some really cool things coming up that he discussed including an APEX App Store.

After all the presentations were done we had the Welcome Reception in the Grand Ballroom. It was really nice to catch up with everyone and meet a lot of new people.

Monday
Following the Welcome Keynote, the individual sessions started on Monday. It was really tough to chose which talk to go to. So many times throughout the conference I wanted to be in two or three places at the same time.

I really enjoyed Dimitri Gielis's presentation on APEX charts. He also mentioned that we may* (in the future) be able to have HTML 5 charts instead of flash charts. This would be very good for applications that run on iOS devices.

On Monday there was the APEX Open Mic night. This is something I was really looking forward to because you get to see a lot of live demos of APEX being used in organizations. Wayne Linton, a fellow Calgarian, kicked things off with a demo of his APEX application for managing roles in the database.

Following the Open Mic night James and Tom from RedGate took some of us out to dinner at Parker's Lighthouse. Great food and good times with those that were there.

Tuesday
Tuesday morning I hid away in my hotel room as I was doing some last minute prep and practice for my presentation. I gave my first talk, APEX 4 + HTML 5 = Awesome, right before lunch to a packed room. It went really well and was a lot of fun.

In the afternoon I went to Roel Hartman's XFiles presentation. It is a cool application for storing and managing files in the database using XML DB. You can even download the application on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xace/

The final session of the night that I attended was Dimitri's APEX in Big Projects with Many Developers. Dimitri showed how he, and the team at APEX Evangelists, develop their applications. It was really interesting to see the list of tools they use and why they use them. It also encouraged me to start tracking time I spend on non-billable items such as writing blog posts, plugins, and answering questions.

Following the presentation everyone went to the Grand Ballroom for Happy Hour where we had some drinks and appetizers.

In the evening I attended the Oracle ACE dinner put on by Lillian Buziak. It was my first ACE dinner and I was very excited to be there and meet some of the other ACEs. After dinner I had a drink with some of the usual suspects (you know who you are) at the hotel bar and then headed off to bed.


Wednesday
After Tuesday's long day and great dinner it was tough to get up on Wednesday morning, but I schleped through it. The first presentation that I attended was by John Scott on APEX 4 plug-ins. The room was packed and, as usual, John did an excellent job highlighting how plugins work and showed off a few that he built. It was really cool to see that John integrated one of the HTML 5 items that I had demoed in Tuesday's presentation into one of his plug-ins.

After the morning sessions I took the rest of the afternoon off to deal with a critical client request and catch up on some rest (I didn't get a lot of sleep over the past few days so it eventually caught up to me).

Wednesday night was the big social event aboard the Queen Mary. The ODTUG committee went all out; it was SPECTACULAR. There was food everywhere, open bar (I was on best behavior since I had to present the next morning), jazz band, dueling piano, poker room, boat tours, and a cover band on the deck. The evening finished with some fireworks. I don't know how they're going to be able to top this event next year but I'm sure they'll find a way :-).

Thursday
Those that woke up on Thursday morning were pretty tired from the long week and the previous night's soiree. I gave my second presentation, called How to be Creative II, at 8:30 AM. A lot of people shockingly showed up and things actually went really well given that everyone was a bit groggy. I threw in a few extra jokes to help keep the audience awake. Dan McGhan was also giving a talk on Dynamic Actions at the same time. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend (since I was presenting) but I heard it went really well.

I attended part of Raj Mattamal's presentation on Collections. Raj is a very "dynamic" speaker and always puts on an interesting talk. I also caught part of Shakeeb Rahman's talk where he converted an APEX application to mimic Apple's home page (he called it iToons). It was Shakeeb's first solo talk and he did an excellent job.

I also had a bit of a surprise on Thursday. At the closing ceremony I won the Best Speaker award for the APEX track and the overall Best Speaker of the Year award! I'm very honored to win the awards.


Summary
For those of you who didn't get to attend you really missed out on a stellar conference. The good news is that you can already register for Kscope 12 at www.kscope12.com which is going to be in San Antonio, Texas. Hope to see everyone there.

- Martin

ODTUG Kscope 11

I'll be speaking at ODTUG Kscope 11 next week in Long Beach, California. I've attended this conference for the past three years and it's always been an amazing time. Some of the world's best Oracle and APEX developers will be there. One of the best things I found is that everyone is extremely friendly and very approachable.

Here are the talks that I'm giving this year:

APEX 4 + HTML 5 = Awesome
Tuesday June 28, 11:15 AM-12:15 PM, Room: 202C

HTML 5 consists of many new features which will make developers’ jobs a lot easier and improve end-user experience. HTML 5 is currently under development but many browsers already support some of its features. APEX developers should be aware of these enhancements. This presentation will highlight some of the HTML 5 features and how to integrate them with your APEX application to produce stunning results.

How to Be Creative II
Thursday June 30, 8:30 AM-9:30 AM, Room: 202B

This presentation will demonstrate how to leverage the APEX dictionary, along with existing plug-ins, to enhance your APEX applications. It will include how to automate monitoring of your application, improve testing capabilities, improve development time, and provide some tweaks to enhance end-user experience.

If things work out I'll be giving away copies of the two books I co-authored (Beginning Oracle
Application Express 4 and Expert Oracle Application Express) at each of my presentations (if this sounds like a bribe it is, especially for the Thursday morning presentation following the Wednesday night party :-). Hope to see you there!

APEXposed 2010

I'll be giving a few presentations this year at APEXposed 2010 in Dallas, Texas.

This will be my first APEXposed 2010 event and I'm really excited to go since they're some excellent presenters this year. If you're new to APEX this will be an excellent opportunity to learn from some of the best in the APEX community.

If you haven't already done so I encourage you to register soon to take advantage of the early bird rates.

I'll be doing 2 presentations and participating in a workshop. I've included the abstracts for them below:

APEX Plug-ins: One of the most anticipated new features in APEX 4.0 is Plug-Ins which allows developers to declaratively extend existing functionality in APEX. This presentation will go over the different types of Plug-Ins and how to create them. Primary focus will be on Item, Process, and Region type Plug-Ins.

Creating your first Plug-In can be intimidating, especially for developers new APEX developers. Some tips to help with obstacles that developers may encounter will be discussed.

Team Development: Managing a development project can be a cumbersome activity without the right tools. Beginning with 4.0, APEX now includes a software development management tool that integrates with your APEX applications.

This presentation will go over these tools and how they can help manage the development life cycle of your APEX application.

Authentication Workshop: I'll be participating in this workshop. Here is the abstract

Who are you, really? This workshop will demonstrate many methods of answering that question, from built-in authentication schemes to custom single sign-on. LDAP, RSA, home-grown. We will provide methods to solve many common authentication requirements.

ODTUG: How to be Creative

At ODTUG Kaleidoscope I promised that I would post my slides from my presentation. Here is a copy of the How to be Creative presentation.

The demos can be found here:

Apex Dictionary: http://www.talkapex.com/2010/07/missing-views-from-apexdictionary.html
and http://www.talkapex.com/2008/11/how-to-list-apex-dictionary-views-using.html

Tooltips: http://www.talkapex.com/2009/09/tooltip-help-in-apex-alternative-to.html

Standardized Help: http://www.talkapex.com/2009/10/standardizing-help-text-in-apex.html

APEX Logs: http://www.talkapex.com/2009/03/custom-authentication-status.html

Custom Error Messages: http://www.talkapex.com/2010/09/custom-error-messages-in-apex.html

Custom Error Messages in APEX

As developers we try to prevent unhandled exceptions from occurring for end users. They can occur in any program or language, and APEX is no exception (pardon the pun).

When an unhandled exception happens, users are presented with an error message which is similar to the following:


This error message isn't very user friendly and most users won't know what an "ORA-..." message means. The other issue with this screen is that it does not provide any feedback to developers. If the user does not report this issue developers won't know that it is happening.

As part of my ODTUG presentation I demonstrated how to alter the default error page to provide a user friendly error message and provide an instant notification to developers that an error has occurred. This post will describe how to do implement a user friendly error handling method in APEX 4.0.

Special thanks to Roel Hartman and Learco Brizzi for providing the ideas behind this.

- Install Logger
Logger is an open source package written by Tyler Muth. It's an excellent tool to quickly allow developers to instrument their code. Though it is not required, this demo references it. A copy of logger is available here: http://logger.samplecode.oracle.com/.

- Install Simple Modal Plug-in
Install the Simple Modal plugin into your APEX application: http://www.apex-plugin.com/oracle-apex-plugins/dynamic-action-plugin/simple-modal.html. When you download this plugin, the zip file contains 2 plugins. One to show the modal window and one to close the modal window. It is recommended that you install both if you plan to use it in other applications. Only the "Simple Modal - Show" plug is required for this demo.

- Create Error Procedure
Compile this procedure in your schema. It will log all the page items, application items, and all other not-null page items.

/**
 * Logs unhandled error message to Database
 * Logs:
 * - APEX and Oracle error messages
 * - All application level items
 * - All page items for p_page_id
 * - Items on other pages that are not null
 * 
 * Logs are stored in logger_logs
 * Requires: https://logger.samplecode.oracle.com/
 *
 * @param p_scope_prefix Scope prefix used in logger
 * @param p_application_id 
 * @param p_page_id Page that error occured on
 * @param p_oracle_error_msg Oracle error message
 * @param p_apex_error_msg APEX error message
 * @param p_email Email to be notified of error. If null, then no notification email sent.
 * @author Martin Giffy D''Souza http://www.talkapex.com
 */

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE sp_log_error_page (p_scope_prefix IN VARCHAR2,
                                               p_application_id IN apex_applications.application_id%TYPE DEFAULT v ('APP_ID'),
                                               p_page_id      IN apex_application_pages.page_id%TYPE,
                                               p_oracle_err_msg IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL,
                                               p_apex_err_msg IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL,
                                               p_email        IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL)
AS
  v_db_name                     VARCHAR2 (30);
  v_schema                      VARCHAR2 (30);
  v_scope                       VARCHAR2 (255);
BEGIN
  -- Set scope for logger
  v_scope := p_scope_prefix;

  -- Add Uniqe Identifier to scope
  v_scope := LOWER (v_scope || 'unhandeled_exception{session_id: ' || v ('APP_SESSION') || ', guid: ' || SYS_GUID () || '}');

  -- Log the initial error to be kept permanently
  logger.log_error ('Unhandeled Exception', v_scope, 'Oracle Error: ' || p_oracle_err_msg || CHR (10) || CHR (10) || 'APEX Error Page Message: ' || p_apex_err_msg);

  -- Log the information to help Dev team in production
  FOR x IN (SELECT 'APP_USER' item_name, v ('APP_USER') item_val FROM DUAL
            UNION
            SELECT 'APP_SESSION' item_name, v ('APP_SESSION') FROM DUAL
            UNION
            -- Include all the items from the current page
            SELECT item_name, v (item_name) item_val
              FROM apex_application_page_items
             WHERE application_id = p_application_id
               AND page_id = p_page_id
            UNION
            -- Include all the non-null page items
            SELECT item_name, item_val
              FROM (SELECT item_name, v (item_name) item_val
                      FROM apex_application_page_items
                     WHERE application_id = p_application_id
                       AND page_id != p_page_id)
             WHERE item_val IS NOT NULL
            UNION
            -- Include all Application Items
            SELECT item_name, v (item_name)
              FROM apex_application_items
             WHERE application_id = p_application_id)
  LOOP
    logger.log_information (x.item_name || ': ' || x.item_val, v_scope);
  END LOOP;

  -- Email Notification
  IF p_email IS NOT NULL THEN
    -- Send Mail

    apex_mail.send (p_to        => p_email,
                    p_from      => 'martin@talkapex.com', -- CHANGE THIS!
                    p_body      => 'An unhandled exception happend in an application. Please search logger logs for: ' || v_scope,
                    p_subj      => 'Unhandled Exception in: ' || p_application_id);
  END IF;
END sp_log_error_page;

- Create Error Page
This page will display a user friendly message to the user. For the purposes of this demo Page 200 will be created to handle error messages.

Create Page
Create Page 200

Create a HTML region
Region Name: Unknown Error
Source: An unhandled error occurred. A notification has been sent to the system administrator.

Create a Region Button:
Button Name: Back
Action: Redirect to URL
Execute Validations: No
URL Target: javascript:window.history.go(-1);

Add the following hidden items:
P200_PAGE_ID
P200_ESCAPE
P200_ORA_MSG
P200_APEX_MSG

Create Computation:
Item: P200_ORA_MSG
Point: Before Header
Type: PL/SQL Expression
Computation: REPLACE(:p200_ora_msg,:p200_escape,':');

Create Dynamic Action:
(select Advanced)
Name: Show Error Message Modal
Event: Page Load
Action: Simple Modal - Show
- Esc Close: No
- Change Opacity and Background Color as desired
Select Type: Region
- Region: Unknown Error

Create Page Process:
Type: PL/SQL
Name: Log Error
Point: On Load - Before Header
Source:

DECLARE
BEGIN
  sp_log_error_page (p_scope_prefix => 'apex.demo.', -- Enter what ever you want to help identify your apex errors in the log tables
                     p_application_id => :app_id,
                     p_page_id   => :p200_page_id,
                     p_oracle_err_msg => :p200_ora_msg,
                     p_apex_err_msg => :p200_apex_msg,
                     p_email     => '' -- Enter your email address here
                                      );
END;

- Change Error Template
Go to: Shared Components > Templates
Select the default Page Template (for my demo mine was: One Level Tabs - Right Sidebar (optional / table-based)
Error Page Template:

- End Result
When you have an unhandled exception the end users should see a message like:


You can view all the log information by running the following query:

SELECT *
  FROM logger_logs
 WHERE scope = 'apex.demo.unhandeled_exception{session_id: 652754467566839, guid: 901e0663a0896b35e040007f0100049a}'; -- Replace this scope with the scope that is sent in the email

Presenting at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2010

I'll be presenting at ODTUG Kaleidoscope in Washington DC this year. If you haven't already signed up I suggest you do so before March 24th as they have an early bird special.

I've been to the past 2 Kaleidoscope conferences where I've learned a great deal about APEX and met some great people. It doesn't matter if you're a seasoned APEX developer or new to APEX, there's always something to learn and a lot of excellent presentations for all levels.

This year I'll be giving 2 presentations on APEX (http://www.odtugkaleidoscope.com/apex.html#dsouza)

Enhancing APEX Security: APEX has some excellent built-in configurable security features. This presentation will go over some extra functionality you can add to your APEX applications that will make it more secure both in the front-end and back-end. Primary focus will be on "enhanced session state protection" and "poor man's" VPD for Oracle XE.

How to be Creative: Using the APEX Dictionary to Create Solutions: The APEX dictionary is a very useful tool which can help enhance existing features in APEX. This presentation will cover how you can use the dictionary to resolve your problems. It will include some real-life issues and how the APEX dictionary was used to resolve them

Of course these presentations may be slightly altered based on the new features and functionality of APEX 4.0.

I look forward to seeing everyone in Washington.

ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 Summary

I just got back from ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009. I met a lot of great people and saw many excellent presentations. My biggest regret was not being able to see everyone's presentations! Here are some highlights from the conference:

Sunday APEX Symposium: Saw some excellent presentations on how APEX was used in other organizations.

- Joel Kallman (Oracle) had a great opening presentation going over the history and future of APEX

- Olivier Dupont (iAdvise): Excellent use of APEX at the airport, even without a mouse or browser access!

- My presentation: Mike Kinahan did a great job filling in for Frank Hoogendoorn on short notice, however my camera man wasn't as good (see picture below). If anyone has some pictures of the presentation can you please let me know?



- Dennis Vanill (PAETEC Software): Using page 0 to cut down on common task for many pages.

- Jan Navratil (CampusIT): Demonstrated that APEX can be used in mission critical applications. Use translation as a configuration technique for each client's definitions.

- Paul Davidson (Cornerstone Brands): APEX used in large scale call center and how he cut down call time.

- Shravan Kumar (Apexor): created the term LAOS (Linux, Apache, Oracle, SQL Developer). Cut down long processes into 4 minutes using APEX!

- David Peake (Oracle): Anounced an APEX development contest for some free tickets to Open World.

Presentations:

- Tom Kyte(Oracle) as always had some great presentation and demo. He stressed (again) use the database for as much as you can since Oracle will do things quicker and faster for you.

- Michael Hichwa (Oracle): APEX 4.0 Demo. I'll write a separate post about this soon since it will take a lot of space (it's just that good)
Edit: 1-Jul-2009. Role Hartman wrote an excellent post for APEX 4.0. Please read it for more info: http://roelhartman.blogspot.com/2009/07/buzz-around-apex-40.html

- Dietmar Aust (Opal Consulting): Free PDF and XLS printing options for APEX. Check his blog for full details

- Scott Spendolini (Sumner Technologies): Managing Multiple APEX applications as one. The full sample application is on his web site here: http://sumnertechnologies.com/framework

- Patrick Wolf (Oracle): Had 2 great presentations. I missed his first one, but was able to attend his second presentation. Besides the content he's an excellent speaker so if you ever have a chance to see him present you should go! Patrick was kind enough to show Dennis and I some more APEX 4.0 features and answer a lot of my questions.

- Francis Mignault (Insum): Multi tenant SaaS APEX applications. I develop SaaS applications as well and it was really nice to see a different development approach.

- Patrick Cimolini (Cayman Island Government): Development Rules and Guidelines Document for APEX. If you're looking for a simple yet effective way to create a APEX standards document I strongly suggest you get a copy of his presentation (I'm going to see if he'll allow me to post a copy here).

- John Scott (Apex Evangelists): Unfortunately I wasn't able to see any of his presentations but I heard they were really good, I'll have to get a copy of his slides and white papers later on.

ODTUG Kaleidoscope - Twitter

I've broken down and created a Twitter account http://twitter.com/martindsouza. I wasn't planning on joining Twitter however it seems like it will be an excellent communication tool for the upcoming ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference.

On that note, our presentation's "Twitter Tag" (I'm new to Twitter so I don't know all the terminology) is: #ODTUG S299. Feel free to post something on Twitter or this blog during the conference.