I had two sessions this Oracle World , well I had a session and I helped out on another.
Sessions (Helper)
The session I helped out with a bit was Mark Drake's Oracle Application Express and Oracle XML Database: A Match Made in the Database. This session had it's beginning's way back at Web2.0 Expo where Mark and I shared a demo booth. XMLDB has a standard sample/demo called XFILES which is a simple yet full featured file management system using all XMLDB features. But it requires using a java server and is kinda slow , well I think it's slow but I might be biased.
So I was like hey Mark! you should build this in APEX since we are both built in features of the database. And lo and behold the his session was born. I helped on and off with building the demo application , and it was a big learning experience, both with the features XMLDB provides as well as were APEX does not leverage them well, something we will be working on improving.
Mark at OOW asked if I could sit in so if there was any specific APEX questions, and hey I'm a people person so of course I said yes. The session was very well attended with many people in the audience already familiar with APEX and/or XMLDB. Mark covered the basics of XMLDB and I quickly went over APEX basic's and then it was all demo.
I really think the application demo and explanation of how things were created was a hit, it showed the power of XMLDB as well as how APEX can leverage it's features directly out of the databasey. Just the number of hands that came up with people saying things like
- Hey I just built that a month a go and yours is cooler.
- Hey I need to build that in the near future and these are great ideas.
- Hey can I have that application?
shows that this session hit a sweet spot. A couple things I got from this is that people like that APEX can directly leverage built in database features and want more of it easier, and secondly I need to really make time to clean up that XFILES application so it can be a packaged application.
Sessions (Mine)
My session was titled Web 2.0 using Oracle Application Express and was pretty well attended , especially since I was up against two other APEX sessions at the end of the day. I like my sessions slide light , demo heavy and with audience participation . Luckily I didn't rewrite my whole demo and slides the day my session as I'm known to do though I was editing right up till the end.
My presentation had two parts.
A technical part that expected people to know or at least have knowledge of APEX and it's built in javascript framework already. During this part of the session I went over features in APEX that were used to build Interactive reports. It goes something like this, in Interactive Reports we have this feature, and this is how it was built
...code ensues...
I like this format since it shows at a low level way how to build features but leaves it up to the developers how they want to leverage it.
I also stress using the proper debugging tools when building client side features , specifically Firefox with Firebug , though I did point out that newer versions of other browsers are also getting these features. Basically if your using a browser that doesn't give you proper error message IE 6/7 among others DO NOT use it for development, your making it harder on yourself and wasting time.
You download my application from here to mess around with.
The second part of my presentation is the real fun part where I get to talk about upcoming features in APEX. So after showing my safe harbor slide , the one that keeps me out of trouble with the boss's , I was able to go over features that we are working on for future release's.
Improvements to the base functions $x() $v() $s() which are the base functions when dealing with page items.
Namespacing of our javascript libraries so that we play nice with other third party javascript libraries.
The use of chaining in our javascript library so that javascript is more compact and reusable.
And finally and my favorite!
Though I've hinted to people off and on for awhile we will be including in the base jQuery library in our next release! It's all signed of and everything and I'm busy rewriting our code to leverage jQuery underneath, one of the reason's it's been tough for me to get these posts out.
In my next post I will go over how the inclusion of jQuery effect's APEX. It's both a bigger and yet smaller change than you might think
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.
Vote! The best session on APEX Authentication you'll ever see!
6 comments Posted by Carl Backstrom at 9:41 PMI'm talking about Raj Mattamal's session up for votes on mix.oracle.com. Raj is a good friend of mine and used to be on the APEX team until he decided to strike out on his own to use APEX to make money in the real world. He is very knowledge about all subjects APEX and this one in particular.
Both Tyler and Dimitri have mentioned voting for Raj's session but I just wanted to throw my endorsement out for this session as well.
If you've seen Raj present before you will know that it is an event in itself and when you combine that with the amount of useful information that comes out of the session it's a winner. Just take a look at my review of his session from last Oracle World.
I have to admit I'm doing this for a selfish reason, I missed his session at ODTUG , I didn't think it was a big deal since I've seen it before, until I was informed it was an entirely different session I was pretty disappointed on missing it, plus he might have some blackmail on me I don't know and don't want to find out ;).
Vote Early , Vote Often.
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 ;)
If you didn't know this year at Oracle World there have been a number of slots saved for community suggested and voted on topics. In the last couple days two APEX ones have been posted that look very interesting.
Rapid Development and Validation of ApEx Applications at an FDA Regulated Medical Device Company
and
(Re)Developing a logistic application in APEX in the real world.
You probably have to register to vote but lets get those APEX number up!
Well I haven't even made it through Kaleidoscope yet and Oracle World isn't 'just' right around the corner but things are starting to move along. Last year introduced the Unconference of which I'm a huge fan.
This year you get the chance to suggest and vote on mix.oracle.com for sessions to be included in at OOW.
You can read more about it here and here.
Lets see some APEX specific sessions anybody have any ideas?
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
- The person is clustered around one of the two pods waiting for a demo.
- 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 ;)
11-10-07
I flew into Oakland airport and take the BART over to San Francisco, I'm always amazed at how smoothly BART usually runs and this time was no exception. So I march up to the King George Hotel (why is everything in SF always uphill?) and proceed to checkin. Feeling a tap on my shoulder I turn around and it's Dimitri Gielis APEX SIG vice president and co founder of Apex Evangelists and we decide to meetup for a couple early night drinks. Now at this point I need to apologize to Dimitri for 2 things.
1. When I say couple it's not a couple as in two. It is a couple as in more than one and less than a dozen.
2. Being from Las Vegas early night means something slightly different than people from other places.
Suffice to say I think we both slept very well.
11-11-07
So Oracle World for me started with the APEX SIG meeting, so I got up early got my coffee and proceed to get registered and find where the SIG meeting was, after a bit of detective work I meet up with David Peake (APEX PM) and head out for the meeting. The other panel members where Dimitri , John Scott , Tony Jedlinski and Patrick Wolf. I have meet Dimitri, John and Tony before but was the first time I've meet Patrick in person so it was really nice.
One of the coolest things about OOW is being able to finally put names to faces.
Now I work from home and while I absolutely can talk with the best of them , it is usually to a few people at most and over the phone. Sitting up there in front of a ton people is fairly intimidating, but I was using it as practice for my session on Tuesday.
Of course the first question directed at me was from Dietmar Aust and was a stumper, it's one of those things that sure you can build around it but it really calls for a new feature to be added, which it will be.
So we were answering questions, it all kind've blurs together what was asked but I do have lots of notes to go through this week, but a question about SQL Developer comes up and some guy in the corner yells out "I'll take that one" and it's Kris Rice who leads the SQL Dev team. If you didn't know our teams are closely tied together which both products having features to take advantage of the other product , and Kris used to be my boss. So it was nice to catch up with him and to have him sit in on the session.
Then I sat in some APEX sessions.
John's Debugging APEX session which was very good and I learned some stuff I didn't know.
Tony's APEX and Mobile Application session which was an eyeopener of where we are causing people some pain in the mobile application development and I have copious notes on this and am implementing some features right now that will greatly help with creating these types of applications.
And the final APEX session of the day which I now term 'The Raj Show!'
Raj Mattamal used to be one of our product managers but he's now out in the world using APEX to make money and he had a session on APEX Security, which is usually a pretty dry subject, but not when Raj does it!
Jumping/running around on stage, waving his hands around, talking a mile a minute and absolutely making sure that everybody knows, everything they can about security given an hour, and you know what, it worked and worked well. I learned a ton about APEX security, I usually don't have to deal with it but I now know easily 500% more about security than I did before, and I know other people in the audience did as well, there is just no way you could have been in that room and not learned something.
So then Raj, Patrick and I went off to Larry's keynote and where soon joined by Sergio Leunissen, another former PM now doing a ton of cool Linux stuff and Joel Kallman director of APEX development and more importantly my boss.
What can I say about Larry's keynote that other people can't say better, it is just an absolute event, and the story of Oracle's beginning's till now was awesome, as with most stories it's not what the story is about but how you tell it, and it was told masterfully.
Other parts of the keynote where a little less impressive, but hey at least they tried, Saturday Night Live folks were as funny as they always are, and that's not a compliment, and there was a band to tell everybody to get out which I hope was what was intended because that's what happened.
So after that I took of with Raj for a couple drinks , see description above, and was soon joined by Scott Spadafore at which point we took over the end of a nice Irish Bar and proceeded with the business at hand, until the lights came on and we had to leave.
The next day was when the demo grounds opened which at least for me is where I have the most fun at OOW.
Next post ( the demo grounds and my session)
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.
I'm doing Oracle Unconference --- Wednesday on Overlook II at 2pm
7 comments Posted by Carl Backstrom at 8:49 AMWednesday 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
And then one of the boss's asked to see it after reading about it, and thought it was pretty nice and said I should post it. I'm a little rough around the edges with the whole vidcasting/vblogging thing , nothing a little practice won't fix, but I had alot of fun doing it and am planning on more of them in the future.
So here it is in all it's grainy Google video goodness.
If you want to watch the higher definition version you can download from here but on Windows I can only get it to run using vlc , my favorite cross platform video player.
I did the whole thing on Linux and the programs I used, while lacking a little polish, were very easy to use.
recordmydesktop
ffmpeg
pitivi
And finally as an OOW note , John and Dimitri , I like my beers tall , cold and plentiful :)
So I saw Eddie Awad's QuickConnect card for Oracle World and I thought that's pretty cool. So I went and got one of my very own.
See you there!
So I just got a sneak peek at abstract for a particular Oracle OpenWorld session and let me tell you it sounds impressive.
Well sneak peak isn't quite the right word since I had to write the thing.
Advanced Application Express - Building Web 2.0 Applications (Carl Backstrom)
With Oracle Application Express you can quickly create applications that include custom Web 2.0 functionality. In this session you will learn about using the built-in JavaScript libraries and application views to build AJAX based interfaces and functionality. Efficient debugging, development techniques to improve reuse and the future direction of AJAX functionality in Application Express will also be covered.
It's a whole lot to cover but I talk fast, especially when I'm nervous but don't worry I also talk LOUD.
I have some ideas of what I'm going to be cover but if your going to be there or want to have the slides after and want me to cover something specific now is the time to comment.
I'm defiantly going to try and make this an advanced session so you better have studied at least the basics of your HTML/CSS/Javascript as it is only going to get about 30 seconds of overview before I jump right in.
I'm taking a hint from John's and Dimitri's posts about starting early to get all the material ready and well I'm starting early.
Steven Karam has provided a PDF of his Oracle World presentation Putting the Express Back Into Oracle Application Express with AJAX. It's a very well written and easy to understand introduction into using some of the built in AJAX functionality in APEX. Plus I gotta love the shout out I get at the end ;).
Take some time to dig around his blog a bit more as well he has quite a few tips and tricks in there. The generating XML post is very nice and something I've been working with lately.
