Begin PSA.
This is a quick heads up , if you haven't checked the blogs you link to lately and you link to anything on orablogs.com you might want to remove or change that link.
orablogs.com isn't what you think it is anymore ;)
While the first click through is "probably" SFW any link or popup after that is probably NSWF.
Stupid link farms.
End PSA.
Most of my last couple posts have focused on new APEX 3.1 features. And there have been some good questions in the comments. So I figured I'd go through some of them in a post to make the answers a little easier to find.
Question 1
What is the difference between add() and addParam()
They are used for passing values in slightly different ways and with different results.
.add() should only be used when dealing with a page or application items, anything else will cause an error, things you set with .add() will also automatically be set in the session state.
.addParam() should be used with what we term as parameters, the main difference being is they are not set in session and are only available for that particular request.
Can I set those global variable's values like common items in PL/SQL:
APEX_UTIL.SET_SESSION_STATE(wwv_flow.g_x01,null);
... or is there any more concise way to do it ?
No you can't set these into the session in PL/SQL. Remember those values are temporary and will not be saved past each specific request. If you need to save values from one of these that's the perfect reason to use a application level item, or collection.
Question 2
There's something I don't get.
Why do you need a temp item at all?
Mainly because it's much easier to build reusable/generic AJAX components that can be used in multiple applications. It's also going to be a big part of how the AJAX component for custom item and regions types will be implemented, more on that later. Don't get me wrong there are very good reasons sometimes to use an application or page item but many times it's not.
A quick rule of thumb is if you want to save a value into session use the application or page items, if you just passing values, use the generic ones.
Question 3
There is also g_widget_name, g_widget_num_return and g_clob_01. Could you explain them also?
g_widget_num_return I just plain missed this, my bad. Many times when I was building something using these new handy parameters it just seemed like I was also adding a number to set the number of return values, instead of wasting one of my x01-x10 we added another one. I've update my code example and the blog posting to show this.
I skipped g_widget_name on purpose as it will be used in a slightly different way in the future. You can absolutly use it now to pass values and it it won't break anything, in fact I'm working on an example that does just that.
g_clob_01 That one at the moment is unused, and might be removed, so I'd stay away from it. If you need to hold on to a specific CLOB the best way is to create a collection and use the clob column in that.
Thanks, for the questions, Matjaz , Anonymous and Mark
Also Doug Gault yet again is the first to to figure out one of my slightly obscure cultural references , good job Doug!
Yup I guess it's my turn this blogtagging thing seems to have taken off, I figured it would get to me at some point , thanks John you know we have some deadlines here right ;).
1. I have a 15 year old daughter and I am 34 years , so if you do the math I started pretty young, fortunately she's much smarter and prettier than her old man, hand codes her HTML , uses the GIMP for artwork , is a cheerleader , snowboards very well, and is savvy enough to IM or call me for all her homework research needs. And if your reading this kid you better be done with your homework!!!
2. I'm a snowboarding fanatic but growing up in Southern California we didn't have that nice soft powdery snow or huge scenic bowls to people seem to like so much. What we had was big jumps and an awesome snowboard park so you'll find me doing 50/50's on the rails and getting big grabs on the table tops. Nowadays I wear a helmet but still seem to get concussed about once a season, so if you see me 5 feet in the air upside down with snowboard on my feet, just keep watching or grab a camera something bad/funny is about to happen.
3. From the age of 8-13 I lived in a windowless shack , as in windows with no glass, on the back acre of a 5 acre farm, well I got windows in when I was 10 ,happy times! The rest of my family lived in a very nice two story house but I had three sisters and they got the rooms in the house. So the answer to 'Were you born in a barn?" or "What did you live in a barn growing up?" the answer is pretty much "Yup".
4. I have a degree in Geography from San Francisco State University, and specialized in GIS and Remote Sensing. I worked for several environmental consulting firms and did things like work on the Presidio Rehabilitation , South Bay Salt Ponds, saving the California Tiger Salamander, and killing Egeria densa in the Bay Delta. I was actually a CS major for most of university and only had a 17 units to go but they were all math classes and I loath math, maybe someday I'll go back just to finish up.
5. After high school I went straight to the construction industry and was planning on doing that for a career. After a couple years on a very hot day (115 f) doing roofing in Lake Elsinore, Ca I decided ,right then and there, to go back to school. Was a waiter for 20 minutes once as well, suffice to say I don't have the temperament for it.
6. I polevaulted all through high school and college, yeah people actually hold on to a stick run full speed put the stick in a hole in the ground and hang on. Hopefully though you land in the pit (the landing pads), and not in box (the cement and metal hole you put the stick in), otherwise you'll end up with torn tendons and ankles that ache in cold weather.
7. You can tell a lot about a person by their favorite quotes....
'The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but 'That's funny...''
-- Isaac Asimov
He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope of ever behaving "normally."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
Godzilla hates infrastructure.
-- Unknown
We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us.
-- Maurice Maeterlinck
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
-- Shakespeare, "Henry VI", Part IV
"Everything in moderation -- including moderation."
-- Harvey Steiman.
8. Every internet / web development job I've ever had in some shape or form has been from craigslist. Oracle actually hired me directly from a craigslist posting, go figure.
And there you go 8 random and hopefully interesting and educating facts about me. So looking around at some people I should tag and haven't at least posted that they have been tagged, So I have 6
Kris Rice , Tyler Muth , Sergio Leunissen, Marc Sewtz , Christian Shay , Kuassi Mensah
EDIT:
There has been a bit of a backlash on the blogtagging thing and truthfully it's not fully out of place, sometimes these things get a life of there own and get out of hand.
http://www.dizwell.net/prod/archives/57
But truthfully I like putting a personal face on things, sometimes I think we all forget there is a person/people on then end of that blog or developing/selling/marketing/researching that product and a bit of lightheartedness , especially in the beginning of the new year is not a bad thing. Sure if this happens everyday i think we will all have a big problem with it. But just once , or even once a year I think helps everybody.
My 2 cents.
Carl
Looks like Oracle has an official wiki now.
http://wiki.oracle.com/
I was even able to use my OpenID to login.
So I went ahead and added an Application Express entry.
http://wiki.oracle.com/page/Application+Express
Have at it !
So someone sent me a link from the Internet Archive for something and I was like hey I want to look at my old sites. Though it looks like the Internet Archive misses quite a bit of the images and flash files but still there was a pretty amazing amount still around.
meetingdoodle.com < I think the name is description enough, a php application that would allow people to upload and comment on the doodles they did in meetings, it would automatially thumbnail and organize them.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010306164224/http://www.meetingdoodle.com/
I have all these images somewhere around 30-40 of them and will have to put them up.
And loungetank.com which has always been my catch all site for anything I want to do, and yes I still have it and no you can't have it because it's mine and I still like the name!
loungetank.com is now APEX based and hosted on shellprompt.com , though there is nothing there for public consumption at moment.
But the stuff that used to be on loungetank is still awesome, at least to me.
There is the alpha of the Geo News Reader I mentioned in my 5 years at Oracle post.
http://web.archive.org/web/20020325231905/www.loungetank.com/geo_news.html the actual running version was much more elaborate, the layout kinda looks like the APEX Object Browser doesn't it :).
And look at at all the different front pages I went through. Since almost everything was built on Cocoon and I was really into building XSLT's
http://web.archive.org/web/20011201045448/http://www.loungetank.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20030201210450/http://www.loungetank.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20030530085533/http://www.loungetank.com/
I still have most of this stuff on ZIP disks (remember those!!!) and now I'm going to have to dig through them to see what I can bring back even for just fun.
Anyway if you've ever had a site that you just kinda forgot about or changed so radically it's not the same site you should take a look for it in the Internet Archive, it pretty interesting seeing all the differences.
I use Google Reader as my only RSS reader and absolutely love it since I bounce around from computer to computer to phone.....
As quite a few other people have pointed out today ,
http://oracleappslab.com/2007/09/06/google-reader-updates/
http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/09/we-found-it.html
Google Reader now has search (among other things), but the thing I mainly care about is the search and it has already been helpful.
David Peake the Application Express PM has joined the blogging community with his blog.
Drop by and say hello and hassle him for some posts.
A nice article with tagging guidelines, even I don't/won't follow them all the time but is something to think about when tagging data.
http://tagamac.com/2007/07/best_practices/
Though you will be probably seeing this on other APEX centric blogs I want to make sure I post about it too.
Patrick Wolf author of the ApexLib and leading member of the APEX community has become an Oracle Ace, I've been lucky enough to have corresponded with him in the past and he's a very knowledgeable and nice (they don't always go together) guy.
Drop him a congratulations in the forum.
And visit his blog.
http://inside-apex.blogspot.com/
Also take a look at the ApexLib it's plugin features like that that internally keep us on our toes with development and it's well worth seeing if it has features meet a need you have.
http://apexlib.sourceforge.net/
Just a quick post. I moved my rss feed to feedburner. I've been mulling it over for a bit and was basically waiting for Google to do it for me since Google and feedburner are same company. But now since they let you redirect the standard blogger feeds http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/2007/07/feedburner_integration_for_blo.php I figured that was close enough for me.
So if you feel the need point your rss readers to here http://feeds.feedburner.com/carlback
If you don't feel the need no worries 'hopefully' the redirection will work as advertised.
Edit:
Looks like there was a hiccup this morning with the rss feed redirect hopefully it is all working now, please feel free to drop a line if it isn't.
