Carl Backstrom's Blog

Hi all it's been a week now since the end of Oracle World and finally have enough time to write up a brief recap of my experience of OOW.

HOL (Hands On Labs)
I helped out in a couple of the APEX Hands on Labs starting with the very first one at 10:30 am on Sunday and they seemed to run fairly smooth , some computer problems but were able to work through them, and were very well attended. Seeing some of the issues people ran into was very informative. Some are just places where we can improve the Hands on Labs themselves and others were where we can improve product, for that information alone I'm glad I volunteered to helped out.

Sessions (Not Mine)
I almost never have enough time for sessions at Oracle World , mainly because I like working the demo grounds, and usually completely ignore my scheduled demo ground times and just hang out what can I say I'm a people person :D , but I did make it to a few.

I was in Joel Kallman's APEX + Globalization session, which was very well attended, especially for a Sunday. Since globalization isn't something I usually have to deal with I always learn something new from these sessions. One thing I did learn about APEX is you don't have to take globalization into account from the very beginning of development comparative to some other development enrollments, though a bit of forethought helps, but can decide to translate and globalize your applications as needed.

The other session I was able to sit through in it's entirety was Raj Mattamal's Security: Writing Custom Authentication Schemes for Application Express session, and as always Raj put on a very enjoyable and informative session.

In fact if one thing ,at least for me, stands out about Joel's and Raj's sessions it's how well both of them communicate some complex very ideas and how easily some of these complex ideas can be implemented with APEX.

Demo Grounds
The demo grounds are my favorite part of Oracle World. Since I work from home usually most my communication , even with the APEX development team, is email / IM / phone calls. Oracle World not only allows me to remember what the people I work with look like but meet people I know from forums,blogs,etc face to face.

I also like demoing APEX, it's fun to show someone who's never seen APEX just how fast you can build and edit a complete working application , APEX pretty much sells itself in the 5 minute demo, and to see how they react when they hear they already own APEX with their current database license.

And for people that have seen or using APEX already I like demoing the new stuff. This OOW the new stuff was Websheets (interactive reports with built in edit and more) and Dynamic Actions (declarative javascript functionality).

As a developer's working on bugs and functionality on these features sometimes we lose track of how cool/useful/needed some of these things are. But to watch people reactions as we show them the stuff they can't play with yet ;) and to get comments and suggestions about the features (good or bad) really makes it worth it.

OOW recap (pt2) I'll go over the sessions I had a hand in , some miscellaneous events over the week.

The blog post after that will be about our plans with APEX + jQuery , it kinda deserves it's own post.

Been awhile since I've posted. That whole work thing will get in the way of that on occasion.

Anyway for people heading to Oracle World .

I'll be helping run the APEX hands on lab.

S298611, 10:30 - 11:30 at Golden Gate A2, Marriott
Hands-on Lab: Extending the Oracle Application Express Framework with Web 2.0

and also will have my very own session

S298613, 17:30 - 18:30 at Salon 14/15, Marriott
Web 2.0 Development with Oracle Application Express


Past that I will be ducking in and out of sessions and unconference events as well as working the APEX booth (by far my favorite part of Oracle World).

I'm pretty excited about this years Oracle World as APEX seems to be , is ;) , huge this year.

I'll be posting updates here on http://twitter.com/carlback and on http://friendfeed.com/carlback so feel free to follow along I'll do my best to keep everyone in loop.

If your at Oracle World please stop by the APEX booth and say hello, and if your not feel free to send me questions through the above service , or http://mix.oracle.com and I'll do my best to answer them or corner someone that can.

P.S. You know it's going to be a long week when Raj calls me up because he heard a rumor I'm already in SF ;) watch that guy he's trouble, but his session will be awesome!!!!

A couple more Apex sessions to vote for.

APEX Team Development, Best Practices, Collaboration and Application Deployment with Oracle Application Express (APEX)
and

Building or Modernizing Enterprise-class applications with Oracle Application Express (APEX)

Also the ones I mentioned before
http://carlback.blogspot.com/2008/06/vote-for-apex.html and a couple others Patrick Wolf mentioned
http://www.inside-oracle-apex.com/2008/06/vote-for-oracle-apex-sessions-at-oracle.html.

Vote Early Vote Often ;)

As Joel blogged here our patchset for Application Express 3.1 is out.

Hopefully this fixes any issues you ran into with APEX 3.1 so we can start on creating all brand new ones in future versions ;)

Well I was at Web2.0 Expo last week and saw many recurring themes with building and deploying applications. Most of which , being biased as I am , I think Application Express is well suited for.

Two of the most often heard were SaaS and Cloud Computing (the cloud!!!) and was wondering if there was any interest of an APEX offering in those contexts.

So being the type of person I am ,I want to hear straight from the people and put this post here on the OTN forums.

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=650092&tstart=0

and this posting on mix.oracle.com

https://mix.oracle.com/ideas/26634-offer-a-saas-cloud-computing-version-of-oracle-application-express

So have at it all comments / opinions welcome

Well this is interesting Marvel and Oracle.

Gotta love the link direct link to APEX.
Makes the job kinda surreal.

extra points if you know the quote!

APEX 3.1 is out for download

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/index.html

You can read about the new features here

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/html/3.1_new_features.html

I just received an email that my abstract for a presentation at ODTUG Kaleidoscope has been accepted.

Congratulations! Your abstract, Building the New Stuff: AJAX, JSON, and APEX 3.1, has been accepted for presentation at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008, June 15-19, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Gotta love that title!

I've never been to New Orleans so am really looking forward to going, I've been told it's my kinda city. If you have any hints / ideas of things I need to go see or do while there please drop me a line or leave a comment.

I have big plans for my session, like it working unlike my first try at Oracle World. Thanks again unconference you saved the day!

I'm not sure if there is demo grounds there or not but if there is I'll be working the APEX booth or at least circling and grabbing people for APEX demos, if there's not I'll be stalking around crowds of people doing pretty much the same thing.

See you there!!

David Peake (PM for APEX) has just posted about a survey Oracle University has

to determine the demand for creating a Certification Program with Oracle Application Express.

Take a look at his posting for a bit more background/info and a link to the survey application, written in APEX of course.

Well within a couple hours why to do an early beta ,at least to me, is apparent, obviously I left something in that makes the javascript fail , in some cases, in Internet Explorer, no I didn't do it on purpose , though given my well known annoyance of all things IE maybe I did it subconsciously.

Have no fear this will be fixed, in fact it's not to far a stretch to say that it will be my #1 priority for the next build.

Another thing that came up was the new themes, just so you do know I/we do much of theme development after main APEX development is done because themes have don't have a translation or functional impact.

Theme 20 is fairly complete and please test, but as people have rightfully pointed out it is theme 19 is just a copy of theme 17. When done theme 19 will be a generic (very lightweight) mobile theme , we did bounce around building a iPhone theme but the design requirements for that are very specific to the iPhone so wouldn't be as useful for people with other mobile devices, like me.

Not to say you won't see a iPhone theme, I happen to know a guy that has one almost done and will make available to download, after 3.1 is released, but we won't ship it in 3.1.

Anyway keep testing and commenting the more things you can find and/or ask for the more things we can fix and/or enhance.

It's that time again, we need your help to make APEX the best possible product it can be. You can register here to get your own brand new shiny workspace with that new version smell.

Please make sure to enter any issues you find in the feedback application, this is a very early beta so make sure to read through the known issues there before posting. I personally know I have features I am responsible for, that while stable are not done yet.

But what we really want for people to focus on, at least till the next build is the new Interactive Reports. We'd like suggestions , wishlists , bug reports, and feedback both good and bad so we can get this feature working the best it can.

I personally would like some feedback on theme 20 as it is made to mimic the look and feel of some of the new Fusion Applications.

Anyway have at it and and let us know what you think.

So as soon as I got home from OOW I saw Beowulf in 3D IMAX and it was amazing! Don't take the kids because it's not a kid movie. If you have the chance see it, see it on the biggest screen you can in 3D, it will never look the same even in the biggest home theater.

So what does this have to do with APEX?

Well it was a good hook for this posting, which it is time to kill a certain myth about Application Express once and for all.

What is that?

It is the myth that APEX cannot scale to support large number of users and/or large applications. It always seems to come up and people seem to ignore that sites like metalink.oracle.com , asktom.oracle.com , Oracle's internal employee directory, and apex.oracle.com (with thousands of workspaces and who knows how many users/developers) , among others support huge numbers of people everyday without a hitch.

Why is that?

Maybe it's the fact that there isn't performance problems that make it easy to disregard how well it does perform. Or maybe it's because with APEX you don't have to throw a bunch of hardware at your performance problem you usually just have to tune your SQL or make use of database features a bit better, who knows.

How can I help do this?

Well you contact david.peake@oracle.com http://dpeake.blogspot.com/ our PM and give him your story about your awesome APEX application that supports large numbers of people. He is putting together some collateral that will definitively (hopefully) inform people once and for all about this.

You can work out with David exactly how you want to be mentioned, it can be in a generic form or you can be specific about your application and your company it's up to you, but please help out if possible , this has been brought up for years and it's just plain misinformation at this point and very annoying.

Oh and see that movie it is really good.

EDIT: David just blogged about the stats for apex.oracle.com as you can see those aren't small numbers.

This is a very long post but I just wanted to get it out of the way, so enjoy, there isn't much technical here so if that's what you want you can probably skip this posting.

Monday

Demo Floor time!

This by far is my favorite part of the OOW. Some people like the sessions, some people like the keynotes, I like working the demo booth, not only do I get to meet people that are already using the APEX but I also get to try and sell interested people on it as well, it's a bit easier than some other Oracle products since the price (free) fits any budget.

So how can I tell that a person might be interested in APEX?

Well there is two ways

1. The person is clustered around one of the two pods waiting for a demo.


2. Or if there isn't crowd around one of the demo pods and you slow down by my booth and you look at the sign, even with that confused look of "Oh this isn't what I'm looking for". Yup that's it that's all it takes, your mine. I'll grab you and give you at least the 30 second demo, which leads into a 5 minute demo, and then to a years and years of APEX development.

Truthfully usually though I only had to go with option 1 as there was almost always a crowd.

Past the regular demo booth salesman role, it was really nice meeting the people that read my blog, or I've helped from the forums or have used my sample application. I even had some people want to take their picture with me, I don't take a good picture my smile is always messed up, but I'll tell you this it sure is good for the ego, like I need help with that.

So after a full day at the demo booth I head back to the hotel to work on my session a bit and then go out for the APEX meetup at 4th Street Bar and Grill. Long story short on that it was very cool, the place was crowded and in the beginning it was tough finding a place to stand and talk but after awhile it all came together and we took over the back area and made it ours till we left for dinner. Not everybody went to the dinner but most of our team was there with some of our foremost APEX developers/users/cheerleaders and had a pretty good Mediterranean meal, the dessert and after meal coffee left a little to be desired , well actually they weren't there as I think they wanted us to leave.

At that point I left to work on my session since the nervousness was finally kicking in.

Tuesday

Session day! That's right I finally get to show the stuff I've rewritten 5-6 times and went through different practice runs with various people (thanks sis).

Now here's the big secret. I've never done this before, not just I have never done a session at OOW I have never done a session anywhere, it's just never been in my job description, and I wanted to do something different for a change which is why I signed up.

So full of youthful energy and vigour I marched right up to the speaker lounge with it's well stocked coffee stand and computers for emailing and tables for sitting and ask the person running it ...

Where the test projector was so I can test my laptop out?
...Silence...
We don't have a test projector here.
...Silence...
Uhhh do one of the other speaker lounges have a test projector?
...Silence...
No.
...Silence...
Uh ok, I guess I should be fine.

As a side note I am going to be sending some emails to the people that run these things because there needs to be at least one test projector at this event, or any event like this, and truthfully there should be one in every speaker lounge, it just makes sense, per the fact that I just expected it to be there.

So with slightly less youthful energy and vigour I march right up to the where I'm going to be giving my presentation wait for my turn and then go to the front plug in my computer and watch as my computer and the projector have a slow fight to the death.

I posted about the result here and don't need to revisit, suffice to say I'm not very nervous about doing session's anymore since there is 'almost' no way anything else could have gone wrong.

Wednesday

Morning = demo grounds (see above)

And my Unconference at 2pm, it seemed kinda easy getting my 2pm timeslot, in fact most of the 2pms timeslots were empty when I signed up because I guess I was running up against some tough competition

But it was really well attended I think every seat was full since there was people standing up and I was able to give my Debugging Apex + AJAX with Firebug and some advanced AJAX usage and finally some 3.1 previews both the fancy prebuilt stuff and the building blocks of that.

I will be doing a vidcast/viewlet of the debugging part since I really feel that it was the most important thing I showed and it will be very useful for everybody.

After that I sat around with Joel , Patrick and Dietmar and watched them demo their stuff.

Patrick demoed his APEX builder plugin and has now officially caused me and the rest of the team more work as we want to build some of those features into the product, thanks man ;).

And then Dietmar went through the demo of what he is showing at DOAG and all I can say is do yourself a favour and if you can check it out it was absolutely one of the most impressive things I've seen especially when given the time constraints he was under.

Finished up the at the demo grounds, then went and saw some random bands with about 25,000 other people and had alot of fun.

Thursday

Woke up to a surprise, I lost my voice the night before and had to demo for a bit without being able to talk.

After about 10 throat lozenges and some water it did come back enough that I wasn't totally mute but it hurt and people were very understanding so it all worked out. I finally made a session and was able to see Dimitri's Advanced PDF with BI Publisher session and it was very cool, I usually render my PDF with handbuilt XSLT but after watching how easy it is to do it using BI Publisher I definitely need to give it a second look.

Friday

I decided to stay in the the city for one more day just to walk around and see how things have changed. I was supposed to meet up with some friends but that fell through so I ended up being tour guide for John and Dimitri which was fun, I went to San Francisco State University and at one time took a "Walking San Francisco" class and have all sorts of random knowledge , you do not want to play me Trivia Pursuit trust me, on the city plus what my years there have taught me so I was able to give a different type of tour.

We ended up at Vesuvio for awhile to have a couple beers and then when the time was right to my favorite restaurant in the world House of Nanking.

All I can say is you need to know what your getting into when you go there, there are rules you have to follow or things can quickly spiral out of control, but if you follow those rules, "Don't move the table Dimitri!!!" everything flows smoothly and you have the best meal ever.

During the meal I felt the need to send some family and friends pictures of the food I was eating and within a minute getting replies. I don't think even one of them can be reprinted in the family friendly blog. But it puts a smile on my face knowing that I had Nanking and they didn't that's right I said it I don't even feel bad.

After that it was back to the hotel to the airport and back home to lay low for a couple days.


And that's it for OOW till next year.


Sorry about the long post I can it won't happen for another year at least ;)

So it's right before the demo grounds open at the last day at Oracle Open World, and I'm sure everybody is very tired.

I'm signed up to help at the demo booths for most of the day, which I really like doing, but of course as it seems is standard for me at this OOW there is a catch.


I have lost my voice!!!

But that's not going to stop me. I've written up a Word document I can point at with some standard phrases so I can at least be useful.

Hello, my name is Carl Backstrom , I apologize but I have lost my voice, fun huh?

But I can run you through some standard demos.


Have you used Application Express before?


I can show a very cool feature from the next version.

I can run you through the demo of creating an application from an existing database table.

I can run you through a demo of creating an application based off spreadsheet data.


Next version?
Calendar 2008

I have about a half hour before this all starts so if you can think of anything else you think people might ask that I should have prewritten throw in a comment and I'll add it in the Word doc.

Basically I'm going to see if APEX can just sell itself ;) which I think it can.

Wednesday on Overlook II at 2pm

So unless you were there or heard about it, my presentation at Oracle World blew up in my face. It seems that Ubuntu and the projectors provided don't mix well. While it wasn't a complete crash and burn, it was definetly a emergency landing.

I had to fall back on my slides , and my whole presentation was supposed to be very slide light and demo heavy, and try to describe to people what the demo was supposed to do. I spent more times on product direction / higher level functions and I still filled the hour and not to many people left so I must have been able to pass along some good info, none the less it wasn't what it should have been.

I worked real hard on my presentation so I was pretty mad at myself/ubuntu/the projector/the world.

But this conference has given me a second chance with the Unconference event. Patrick Wolf mentioned maybe I should do it agian at an Unconference which made alot of sense to me.

So I marched up to the signup board put myself in a slot to present.

I worked way too hard way to hard on this presentation for people not to see it..

So Wednesday on Overlook II at 2pm come by and I'll give it a try again, plus I'll be showing 3.1 features on a huuuuuge projector.

Im leavin on a jet plane
Don't know when Ill be back again


Well I'm all packed up and ready to go! Just killing some time waiting for my ride.

I used to live in San Francisco before I moved to Las Vegas so besides being excited about Oracle OpenWorld I'm excited to see how The City has changed and to meet up with some old friends during the week.

At the last second I was able to change my plans so I will be attending most of the APEX SIG meetings on Sunday, I might have to skip out on some of later ones. I'll also be working the demo booth for most the day on monday, and through out the week, unless I can sneak off and see some sessions, and I'll be putting finishing touches for my session on Tuesday.

As Eddie Awad and the AppsLab guys have blogged there will be plenty of ways to keep track of things at Oracle OpenWorld and I hope to add to one or two of those feeds.

Here's my connect card one more time.



So drop by the demo booth to say hi, or come to my session to drill me with really hard questions I can't answer on the fly.





And the original for you purists