2020 Blog Review

Ahem.

select apex_string.format(q'[It's been %s days since my last confession]' 
                         ,trunc(Sysdate) - date '2020-04-14'
) "G'day World" from dual

G'day World
-----------
It's been 282 days since my last confession

It's been so long, the Blogger UI has changed. I don't think I like it. Maybe another thing to consider adjusting in the new year...

It's also been four years since my last blog review, and I promised this one may be a doozy.

2020 was something else, right? I spent a good portion being thankful that I 

1. kept my job
2. could work from home
3. live in such a remote city, which helped keep my family & friends safe

Aside from the APEX@Home event in April, I decided to scale my extra-curricular work right down, hence the lack of blog activity over the past year. I've kept active in the forums, because looking through those helps give my brain a bit of a reset when focus starts wandering.

But I wanted to be sure I had the time, energy, or whatever it was I needed to power through whatever 2020 potentially dished out.

Thankfully, from my end of the world, things are relatively OK. I've been to a few outdoor gigs, and aside from a few regular adjustments, life is kind of normal. Kind of. We're not completely insulated from the outside world, and things could change in a moment.However, I've used this down time to improve my investment game, should my IT career start to falter.

But that leads onto another astonishment for the year. I saw a lot of people I knew outside tech lose their jobs, though thankfully most of them had options elsewhere. Meanwhile, I'm presented with numerous avenues. I happened to choose a new avenue.

As of the end of January 2021, my tenure at Sage Computing Services comes to an end after 13 years. 

When I look back, it's staggering what I've done with the support of Penny at Sage.

• Transitioned from Forms based development to Oracle APEX.
• I published a video series using Oracle APEX. 
• I published a book involving Oracle APEX. 
• I was recognised as an Oracle ACE.
• I spoke Kscope. Twice. Well, two cities, 5-6 sessions, I think.
• Helped create some amazing project work with an amazing team.
• Found a great work-life balance.

And I still have the yearn for more.  I have two more ideas for video series I still want to explore, and one could work as another book.  

It was a really tough choice leaving Sage, but yet again, Penny supported me through the options, and I'm fairly sure I've found a project that's the perfect fit for me, and it was hard to ignore.

And for a moment there I felt like I was presented with the cliche of red vs blue pill.

Development or ...

I'm not sure which one represents the world of development, but I didn't identify a managerial style job back at University - so while I 'manage' a lot of things as a developer, my passion is cutting code.

Therefore, the coming years are going to be explored as a contractor at a new firm, while I return to a past client to transition them from Forms to Oracle APEX. The good & bad news: I built a bunch of those Forms!

2020 project challenges were tough. I'd be kidding myself if I didn't think 2021 projects at a new location will be any different, but I'll be looking to step up my skills & habits while I'm at it.

Hopefully you'll be hearing more from me via this medium in 2021.
I've missed it, and I'm ready to come back.

And here's to seeing James Webb Space Telescope finally launch this year!

Thursday Thought: Imposter!

Ever feel like you're struggling to keep up? With anything at all?

I'm feeling a bit of that with APEX right now.

Partially because I've been at a site that is a version or so behind, but who isn't, right?

But those fine specimens on the Oracle APEX team keep producing so many nifty things, I'm finding it increasing difficult to keep up. Same with the database itself. So many great new practical development features in 18.x.

Time to buy?

I'm sure I'm not the only one, and the fact I'm writing this 6 months after I noted the idea kind of illustrates my point. It was spurred a little bit from Tim Hall's post about the little funk he's feeling. Some of the issues he's been feeling resonate with my own. Work has been good and bad, my presentation game is a little off, and I'm not blogging as much. Heck, sometimes I used to schedule a few posts in advance, instead of posting a flurry.

There are a few major factors involved, including, but not limited to:

1. Managing a house containing a little human learning to communicate
   
   
2. Moving house
   
   
3. Needing to work hard to prove what seems blazingly obvious to us - that building enterprise applications with APEX is an advantage.

They're all positives in their own right, just a little disruptive if you're used to having a little extra time to learn on the side.

However, as I'm sure I've moaned before, I miss the writing. The learning process of breaking something down enough to try explain the topic in a blog post - mostly so future me can remember how something worked, then replicate/adopt it for my new problem. "Oracle Things I Got to Remember Not to Forget"
It frees my mind a little, knowing I can let it go because I've noted this resource effectively for the future.

I also like sharing with the community. Let's wreck this together, right? If we're all helping each other, we're all building better applications, we're all pleasing our customers, we're all sustaining our careers.

Point 3 has a richer story I can't share here, but it is still great for learning how to build applications with a rich user experience. I think my UX & logic building is currently on point, but I'm seeing posts from people like Adrian, Morten, & Vincent just killing it, exploring new avenues, doing funky things.

Not that's really been my bag here on my blog, I've always been focussed on practical solutions with any feature available to us. Features that anyone could be using, possibly shown in a way you may not have seen before, or reinforcing and idea you have. So worrying what others are doing just feeds doubt.

So I'd like to tie this rambling back to learning APEX, and whatever funk may be nearby.

I feel my progress using this development tool has shown a reasonable learning curve, punctuated by a few events - such as the availability of the Page Designer, introduction of the Universal Theme, and understanding how to effectively use Dynamic Actions.

And when I use the term punctuated, I mean I might be working effectively with the tools I'm aware for some time, learn a new trick, gain a new feature, then things improve dramatically for a time.

And just as I started to write this post, I found an article (whatever he's selling aside) that really nailed what I was thinking. I recommend the read, by anyone with a career: https://taylorpearson.me/punctuated/

So if you're feeling in a funk, maybe it's just status-quo.
The next interesting development may be just around the corner.

If you still feeling a little of the imposter syndrome, particularly if you're currently working in a small team, I recommend considering the comments on this tweet from tech commentator @SwiftOnSecurity.

Of course, one solution to my problems is less Twitter, but... input.

Happy new year!

I'm still here.

It has been some time since my last confession.

It's been a while, but sometimes you get busy, ya know?

And a different sort of busy, the sort that left me wanting to escape to a different place. I spent a bit of time playing an old favourite, Civilisation.

I really like to write, consolidate ideas, and share insights in this forum, but it's rare that I have such a gap.

I also miss it.

I always have plenty of unfinished drafts, but I also usually have a few recent experiences that are like an itch waiting to come out.

There are also a few other factors. My laptop is just within warranty and I'm finally getting a line of pink pixels fixed. I'm also gonna wipe Ubuntu off it and go back to Windows.

I feel my OS sojourn was successful in that I realised in a career of learning such as development, some of us need to learn to swim in a pool, not the ocean. Not the best analogy, but close enough.

My workplace is always (usually) Windows, any exploration on my laptop can be within a VM from the comfort of Windows. I've also got accumulated decades worth of keyboard shortcuts, and the muscle memory alone keeps me to the original style keyboard, not the weird ones that Macs use.

And it turns out we're also gearing up to move house, well, start by putting our place on the market. That sounds like fun, right?

You'll find me escaping occasionally, back here, writing with passion about what I find to be an interesting career. That, and reading/listening to stuff about science. There is some amazing stuff going on in this world!

2016 Blog Review

It's February, so it must be time to do this. I explore what thoughts arise from looking back, and forward to the future. It helps me to remember stuff, decide what to do, and apparently some people find it interesting.

Tools

So many tools. And I arguably don't use enough of them.

APEX 5.1

It's out and I'm excited. Unfortunately, scheduling is super tight, so I'll be waiting at my current site until hopefully around June, but I've certainly been enjoying the play on apex.oracle.com. I look forward in particular to the OracleJET built-in charts, we've got some great dashboarding ideas to explore.

I've seen plenty of questions come through the forums on the Interactive Grid, but I'm by-passing most of those until I get the chance to use it. I sure know where it belongs, and I look forward to understanding how it ticks, and the implications it brings.

JET plug-in - work in progress

OracleJET Visualisations

After an interesting overview in the depths of OracleJET from Chris Muir, I assigned myself homework that's seen me quietly working away on some plugins, bringing OracleJET visualisation (charts) for use in 5.0. I'm not sure how successful the cultivation will become, but I am documenting my journey. Expect a decent series of articles on my process, but be patient. I've had a hiccup with JSON and I'm giving it a rest for a little bit.

12c

We have 12c at our main client site and I appreciate some of the features it brings, so much so I look forward to 12.2, particularly LISTAGG.

I particularly like Identity columns; the row limiting clause, though I probably abuse it sometimes; and I reckon I must spike page hits for Tim's post about lateral & outer apply joins.

I'm starting to explore performance benefits of PL/SQL in WITH clause, and the UDF pragma, among other features.

JSON

My colleague has done some interesting stuff with parsing incoming JSON using 12.1 SQL, and I'm slowly exploring with my plugin generation using APEX_JSON and LISTAGG. With made another step deeper into 12c by upping MAX_STRING_SIZE to allow for processing of larger JSON.

I'm quite glad it's no longer XML.

It seems 12.2 will be bringing the remainder of tools required to really get going with this. There's quite a lot of polish I've seen in this release that makes it an attractive upgrade.

Atom

After many, many years using Textpad, I'm giving other editors a go. Atom has shown good promise, but I'm still yet to get it compiling my packages on a Windows box, though I haven't persisted.
There are some other minor niggles, but it does bring great benefits. I might give Sublime a fair go this year, however. There's beer in it for anyone who can get me compiling from a text editor that pleases me. Sorry, I only use SQL Developer for ad-hoc queries, compiling from scripts, and some not enough built-in reports.

I am casually interested in how Atom was built. I see Android Instant apps as being something to keep an eye on with this amazing JavaScript tech.

JavaScript and node.js

I really haven't given node.js a fair go, and if there was anything other than OracleJET visualisations that I want to learn this year, it's node.js. Maybe my QNAP will help me learn after all.

Ubuntu

As much as I see the benefits of running a linux based operating system, I think I just need to accept my fate as Windows proficient, using Virtualbox when I can. Too many hurdles to transition operating systems when there is a world of user interface development to keep up with.

ORDS

I can't add much to this from this year, except we've had a steady keel for 12 months. I'd like to move to nearly whatever the current version is when we up to 5.1.
I did notice spikes in the connection pool that endangered other users when a page was opened containing an image gallery, particularly for a 'job' with a large number of associated images. We added pagination to that page to cap these spikes and keep them below our connection pool thresholds.

Community

Thanks to all those who answer and ask questions online (and at conferences, of course).

ACE

Plenty of hub-hub this year about the Oracle ACE program, and the potential for a number of Ace Alumni to appear. It's going through a maturation phase. Let's wait for it to evolve and continue to recognise and potentially aid those people helping the community thrive and develop. Kudos to all those diligent experts out there who remain unrecognised within this particular program, but support their teams and community with their humble expertise.

I'll continue to output stuff that helps me remember stuff and benefits other people, regardless of which side of the line I'll fall. Whatever helps my abstracts get submitted when I occasionally venture out in this giant planet ;p

Blogging

No real exciting stats to report this year. Growth minimal, but quite the regular heartbeat of visitors. Many of them me, looking up certain references. This is the very reason that tipped me over the edge when starting this blog, seeing this byline:

"Oracle Things I Got to Remember Not to Forget" - Alex

2016 Blog visitors - Lift your game, Greenland

For some reason, my reference to Carsten's LISTAGG function was the most popular this year. Perhaps because more people like us who are using this to generate larger JSON sets prior to 12.2?

Also up there for hits was about one of my favourite APEX development patterns.

It took until #22 in the most visits by page for a 2016 post, an important one on improving PL/SQL performance in APEX. Some of my favourites from this year include decommissioning triggers, and a debugging how-to that may be a useful reference in the forums (#40).

Spiking briefly was this Patterson-Gimlin style glance at APEX 5.2

APEX Sample Applications

If you haven't heard, Dick Dral possibly leads the pack at the moment in regard to sample applications, I need to have more of a play in there. He's been a busy boy!

While reviewing blog page hits I noticed activity this page where I started to catalogue my bookmarked list of community sample applications. Maybe I can finish modernising my sample app and make these more prominent, or find a better home elsewhere.

Book

For anyone who purchased a copy of my jQuery in APEX book, thank you, and I would recommend you re-source chapter 9 electronically. Somehow an early draft made it in but it has since been replaced, using what seems like a logistically amazing process in the world of publishing.

If you like video format, I did this video series for 4.x, but many principles still apply.

While I've got a back-log to read, this Real World SQL and PL/SQL is hard to go past. Well done, gang.

AI

Because I like science and technology.

Among other things, I predict forms of intelligent systems / AI will be a science we'll see more of in the world, solving problems that wouldn't immediately spring to mind. I also wonder if it will help clients become event thinner, so I can stop complaining about not having enough space for apps on my phone, even as a moderate user of apps.

Astronomy

Because I've liked this since I was single digits.

This year will mark the end of an amazing mission that I've been following for quite some time. Cassini has been exploring more than just Saturn as shown in this amazing timeline. It's already committed on its fateful descent into Saturn in September.

Saturn moon Iapetus

I know in next year's review I'll be talking about the amazing James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch around a year after Cassini farewells. This thing is going to be the biggest thing for astronomy since Hubble. Literally. The few weeks between launch and confirmation of a functioning telescope will be the most thrilling moment that represents years of work for thousands of engineers. There's no second chance like Hubble had, nor any service missions, not while still humanity struggles to exceed low earth orbit.

Science, in general, is actually quite a big part of the current news cycles, but for all the wrong reasons. I wonder how this will change if China's Chang'e 5 makes it to the moon and back this year, making it the third country to achieve this amazing feat and the first in 40+ years. I wonder how POTUS will respond?

There is at least one reason to be in the land of the free this year, for on August 21 a total solar eclipse travels across the entire country, a rare event hopefully inspiring many budding young scientists.

Happy science, everyone.

2015 Blog Review

Time for my look back on 2015 and what I might aim for in the coming orbit around the sun. The highlighted word is dedicated to the #flatearth people I've been conversing with on Twitter recently. Wow.

Like many people, part of the reason for doing these sorts of things really what every person should do semi-regularly -> write down your aspirations. I remember being taught goal setting from a young age and I think it's a life skill that many leave behind.

Same topics as last year, with a different order by, but they're all tightly coupled anyway ;p

Tools

Ahh, so many things to play with, so little time.

APEX

There will be a lot going on for APEX again this year. No doubt you've already read Joel's summary of 2016. Oh to live in the US/Europe (or have fast, cheap, efficient modes of transport).

Content for APEX at Kscope16 looks amazing, it's a shame it's a touch early to see stuff about OracleJET and the Interactive Grid in 5.1. That's OK, I'm still learning the full impact of life in 5.0.

I'll continue to work on Universal Theme projects, which pleases me. Plenty still to learn and absorb, adjusting to our evolving development framework. Thanks again to the development team for the Page Designer, it has vastly improved productivity.

I would like to see Share Components integrated into the Page Designer, certainly for viewing but I'm sure even editing could be cleverly integrated with modal dialog pages. I often operate with two browsers running the builder, Chrome for Page Designer; Firefox for Shared Components.

I'd like to hear more about how the Universal Theme will change, what sort of life cycle it will have, and how information about change is relayed. I know it's changed since inception, and no doubt within patches. I wonder if any tweaks fix the little issues we've been finding. On my list is to copy an app, verify the them subscription, and try it out. Maybe export the themes and do a diff?

Anyway, I've found CSS use has cut greatly since running UT, I've cut plenty from converted applications. I've even modified the balance I'm looking for between Dynamic Actions and jQuery.

I truly could rattle on for ages. My three developer buddies at work will testify to that.

ORDS

Personally I would  like to see more on ORDS. I feel related documentation is still maturing and there only seem to be a small handful of experts sharing their experiences & techniques.

As someone with a prominent development hat, I'm thankful to have a colleague that understands that middle tier better than I. Unfortunately we're a small team and setting up JMeter for load testing is still on the list.

I saw a bit of chatter online regarding mixed content issues on version 3.0.3, and performance issues after 3.0.1, both of which we experienced empirically. The ORDS team must feel what Android software authors face were there's a zillion combinations of infrastructure.

Even though ORDS is sprouting it's own wings, I think the APEX and ORDS team need to stay tightly coupled. At this point I'd guess most ORDS deployments at least serve APEX. I've already overheard the observation that most people see it as a just that, and clients don't split hairs when something goes wrong.

"APEX is down", and nothing worse than middle tier experts saying "not us" when it's certainly outside the database layer. We can't wreck this together unless the arm supporting ORDS gets more support.

That's my plea for the (fantastic) Oracle developer advocate group in 2016 - more aid for ORDS. Maybe a hashtag would help? ;p #ORDShelp

12c

Our current client upgraded to 12c over the festive period, so no doubt I'll have a few development experiences to share with this newer environment. Probably on topics related to JSON and SQL syntax. Look out for #db12c

Text Editor

For a long time I've used Textpad for my text editing needs, but I'm tinkering on the edge of leaping to either Sublime or Atom. This needs to happen this year. Eddie, get me on it!

Community

Last year I said to Juergen that I'd help out with apex.world. So far I've written the intro post for Slack, but I still haven't honoured the other task he sent my way. I could blame the book, tendinitis, the holiday period, but I know there's procrastination in there, too. Sorry mate, soon.

I doubt I'll get to any international conferences this year, but I'm going to start paying more attention to the Asia-Pacific region. I'm on the lookout for communities I'm yet to discover. That sounds like a tautology, something self evident, but let's call it a known unknown.

I'll certainly hang around on Twitter and Slack, and I might get back onto the PL/SQL Challenge. I gave it a break for a while, but I need some 12c tips. I asked Tom Connor a question recently, I might spend some time perusing the headline questions, too.

Blogging

I intend to spend a bit of time finishing all sorts of semi-drafted posts, technical and otherwise. I'm not longer writing a book and this yearn to write has to go somewhere. I still have plenty of notes from my experience at Kscope15, which was amazing. I look forward to the time where I can travel more.

I have fun when analysing the statistics from the previous year. I think many of us unknowingly love assessing numbers and statistics, which is my hypothesis as to why cricket and baseball are so popular.

Readership growth has tapered, which I find interesting. Does that mean I've hit most people out there, looking for stuff, or have I just filled up my current channels?

I must say it was fascinating at Kscope to hear about people who've read my blog or heard I was there and sought me out. Rambling on the keyboard to a faceless audience is weird sometimes, so I was thankful for the positive feedback. People compliment on my writing style, and I humbly accept and strive to improve.

Back to the stats, the most telling of which is browser usage

• Chrome up 16%
• Firefox down 11%
• IE down 23%
• Safari up 27%
• Opera down 18%

Big differences, no real surprises, is there?

Mostly read on desktop, but mobile up 64%, but that's relative, not absolute. 3k mobile readers vs 53k on the desktop. Similar relative growth for social media vs organic searches. Twitter certainly is a growing factor in disseminating (and finding) technical content.

Plenty of interest in APEX 5, 1500 visits alone from Patrick's meta post aggregating APEX 5 articles
http://www.inside-oracle-apex.com/oracle-apex-5-0-articles/

I find this curious every time but only two articles from 2015 made it into top 10 most visited. One was Sample community applications, which makes me want to progress this idea further with the gang at apex.world. Second was my reference to Carsten's listagg clob.

To add perspective, the reigning top page represents 4.7% of visits. If I interpret this correctly, the top 10 pages represent over a quarter of the year's page visits, which is quite the heuristic.



Strangest search term?
apex 3.x dynamic actions

Books

My first book is complete. What a journey that was, with Kscope and APEX 5 thrown in between. A little shame about chapter 9, more on that to come, likely in some form of errata. I'll hopefully learn from that lesson.

Anyone who has read it, thank you and I hope I can get the updated chapter to you soon. I hope any reviewers hold out until they've had a chance to read through ;p

I bought a few myself with the Cyber Monday sales that I need to start reading. A have a couple on node.js but I look forward to learning heaps in the revised Expert Oracle APEX.

I need to fit a novel or two in as well. We're have a short holiday in Bali soon, I no doubt have a good sci-fi ready to go.

Videos

As I suggested in Monty's post about my APEX game, I've considered recording little videos showing I build the game, in addition to the presentation I did for the local user group. Nothing fancy, certainly not like Connor and Tim's videos, just little tutorials that watch me work. Even little things like rebuilding my sample application in the Universal Theme.

I've also got a lot of video watching I want to do. I have a few set to go from ODTUG already, such as webinars I've missed because they've been on at 1am. I've barely seen many of Connor & Tim's yet, I just don't watch many videos, I prefer to read my content. So I've got to schedule some video watching time, certainly before Kscope16 videos flood in. They're my best alternative to being there, that and participating in the Twitter stream during the conference.

Science

As with any year, 2016 has plenty of interesting science to look out for, and I love it. I will continue to also tweet science stuff I find interesting, in addition to the usual #orclapex #db12c #jQuery hashtags.

I've been planning to post a list of my favourite podcasts for a while. For those interested I have plenty to recommend. They make great listening during transit to work. Exercise that brain.

Health

Having a toddler has introduced a lot of viruses and some bacterial infections to the house. This made exercise a little difficult, but I have managed to swim regularly with a small group of guys at work. We do a steady 1km at lunch, aiming for once twice a week.

That's awesome, but I have equipment at home I need to use more often in the morning, particularly with the amount of chocolate I eat, which has to come down!

But first, I have to wait for what's apparently tendinitis in my right hand to calm down. I've done a decent job at resting it, but maybe that leaves room to help improve mental health.

Take a walk, enjoy the sunset. Rest your eyes and let your brain do some awesome stuff in the background while you're admiring the world.

On that note, enjoy your fresh start!

Kylie is Dancing with Oracle

Almost five years ago I introduced Kylie to our little Sage flock.

Now she ventures into the world of blogging. She'll no doubt talk about Oracle development in some form, either SQL, PL/SQL, APEX, or for some bizarre reason, JDeveloper.

But who knows where blogging leads, huh?  Check her out at
dancingwithoracle.com

Aptly named after her passion for dancing.

She's got a related twitter account:
@dancewithoracle

Blog on.

APEX blogger from Iran

At Kscope I felt geographically isolated, but I was impressed with all the second language speakers attending.

I can only speak one language, and some would argue I don't do well at that - but people were presenting in a language foreign to their native tongue! Kudos.

The Internet I see and view is predominantly English, and no doubt my search results are skewed accordingly. Occasionally I'll find some bloggers in another language and in the days of "translate this page", I have no problems reading them - just be careful with code translation.

Speaking of that link, that was a German post by Carsten Czarski. Through the Official APEX Linkedin group I found Mahdi Ahmadi from Iran. I understand he writes in Persian, and his recent post describes an APEX app that looks superb for database monitoring. He's arranging to release it on Github, but I also hope he talks with Martin D'Souza about getting it on OraOpenSource.

Dashboard Monitoring iranapex.ir

Mahdi's blog name leaves it pretty clear what's going on:
iranapex.ir

I thought I should give him a shout-out due to the English language bias. Though based on his LinkedIn connections, you've all probably met him already!

And I'm stuck here, down under ;p

All commenters now welcome

I've finally bitten the bullet and disabled the Google+ commenting mechanism from this blog. I promised this in my 2014 annual review, and I figure I might as well not wait.

When Google announced they would integrate Google+ with blogger, it sounded like a good idea at the time. However it required that commenters needed a Google+ account as opposed to having a number of authentication options.

Unfortunately this means the many comments made since turning it on will disappear into Google+ land, and won't be visible from the relevant post. There's plenty on the topic out there, so much so I've lost whatever discussion I had with someone about it.

It's a shame because some comments were particularly useful, with clarification coming from the APEX team regarding functionality in coming releases. It does mean the bugs that came with it also disappear.

Update
- I get email notifications for comments - big win
- Post list now shows how many comments in each post - it's the little things
- Last comment found was March 2013 - 2 years into the G+ ether

Google+ comments are still available in web cache ... for now. According to this site I think these comments may disappear from cache after three months, I'd be happy to be enlightened otherwise.

Googling a URL with the cache: prefix will open the cached version immediately

cache:http://www.grassroots-oracle.com/2013/10/customise-totals-row-in-apex-classic.html

Or you can click on the little arrow next to search results to open the cached version.

Opening cached version of webpage using Google

I thought the Wayback Machine may also help but it doesn't seem to have archived any individual posts.

At the end of the day I'll be happy if this encourages more people to provide feedback. It's a great way to learn, particularly when I make mistakes in my posts or something mentions a better way.

2014 Blog Review

Yup, it's February. Early adopter 3 for APEX5 has just become available, and I've just logged of an APEX 3.2 instance.

I've had this sitting my drafts for some time (it has company), thought it best I finally finish it off an move on.

Considering I fathered an awesome girl in January with my bare hands, surrounded by kangaroos with warm pouches waiting (some facts may have been distorted in this story), I think I did pretty well on the nerd front.

Blogging

Last year I aimed for a post per week and I think I honoured that fairly well, with a few peaks and troughes. I'll have nothing on Mr 100 Day Dimitri.

My March series on APEX 5 drew the biggest crowd, and my non-event webinar was the other blip thanks to some really ordinary internet speeds. Certainly no good for streaming anything either, so nothing from me netflix australia, though I hear I won't miss much.

This year I'm going to need to cut right down due to some other projects afoot. That being said I have a heap to process that have been drafted, from tech posts to observations (that will be dated) & other ramblings. And I'll certainly mention a thing or two if/when I get to play on APEX5 EA3. Luckily the community is right on top it, 1180 workspaces and counting.

For some reason my older posts still get the most hits though, I guess I need to post some new corkers.

I'm 99% certain I want to ditch Google+ comments and go back to one that accepts a wide range of identities. One that also notifies me of comments so I can interact in a timely manner with visitors so kind to leave some thoughts. Just a matter sitting down one day. Only trouble is I think I'll lose some history in the process.

APEX 5

Congratulations to the APEX development team on the amazing release that is APEX5 (EA3). I suspect this release will be darn close to the final product, though I'm sure they'll receive some very useful feedback.

I look forward to getting some time to update our training course notes and finding the usual unexpected goodies. Hopefully I'll be writing client software on it without too much adieu, and I'll never want to go back to 4.x, let along 3!

Even after a few days play the 4.x blue seems dated.

ACE

I originally had a great segue, but I redrafted. Anyway, at least two fine humans gave the honour of ACE nomination in 2014. I've drafted some thoughts on the topic that I'll post separately one day.

Career

We had a fantastic APEX deployment to iPads that continues to make most of the team keen to use the tool. Resultant data is coming through now and they're liking the shapes it can make! More exploratory work with a variety of web components continues to demonstrate how flexible APEX can be as a framework to the database.

A colleague and I were recently reviewing the Kscope presentations that we would attend (there are so many!)
So many brilliant open source frameworks and technologies being talked about at Oracle conference that simply weren't around 3-4 years ago.

What must it be like for a software developer coming out of university these days? Spoilt for choice or overwhelmed with options? It's hard enough to keep up with 15 odd years under the belt. I'm starting to feel like the COBOL programmers I met in my first developer job, well, maybe not that bad.

Book

Yep, I'm halfway through... ok, maybe a third.. writing a book involving APEX. This shares top priority at the moment and I'm very excited about it. More detail in future and writing with Apress is such a different experience to developing a video series with Packt.  A future presentation, I sense.

And so much easy to refer to a 'book'. 'Video series' just doesn't have the same ring to it, or 'screen casts on APEX techniques'. Even producers of podcasts can summarise it in one word.

Anyway, I don't think it will be ready by Kscope15, maybe Oracle Open World. I think I'm ahead, but I've also got a presentation to finish/write.

Kscope15

Holy smokes I can't believe I'm finally heading to a conference like Kscope. I must say many thanks to Sage Computing Services for getting me there and supporting my growth over the past 7 years, I have the most wonderful boss. That being said, it will be the biggest dragon of time over the next 5 months!

ODTUG have been generous to me since I've got to swim so far to get to Florida, so they've given me two presentation slots. There was word on a third, not the bird, just the word. (Late night joke referencing this)

For some reason I decide that it's this year I'm inspired to write my first 'best practices' type presentation, but I'm excited about the theme I'm using, just working on the content. I'm jealous of Peter Raganitsch's survey idea and look forward to hearing his results. I'm still in mind to still do a super short one with some targeted questions, just to test the waters with certain topics.

I'm also running the jQuery deep dive, though I'll have to shrink it a little and make some upgrades to suit the flavour of Kscope. Rest assured this one is to help the masses take hold of such a ubiquitous toolset.

There will be some smart cookies at this conference but hopefully I can offer some fresh perspective. If anything you'll perhaps walk away knowing about a few more amazing scientists - the real heroes. I'm turning up the geek to eleven in my 'Evidence Based APEX' session ;p

My wife and (by then) 18 month old will be journeying with me. We'll hopefully be rampaging through New York, probably Niagra, Washington DC, Florida, Disney, Las Vegas, and San Fran for 4th July. And I welcome any suggestions, including what to do about the falling aussie dollar!

Youtube

Failed on that on this year. I was kinda waiting on APEX 5, I had a theme in mind. Maybe some this year. Maybe.

Ubuntu

Still running new laptop on it, skimming the surface. Still have Windows 7 laptop on side as backup for certain things. Ubuntu's not bad but not bug free. I think I'm liking it better than Windows, but there's a lot of catching up to do.

12c

Looks good, I like some of the new features a lot but still not sure I'll encounter it in 2015. I have friends on the same street however that have even done some pattern matching awesomeness.

Science

I wanna see this close up

There is so much groundbreaking stuff going on, hard not to read about it. This year during Kscope, a probe will be well within range for photos of Pluto with better resolution than Hubble, and zooms by in mid July. The plutoid hasn't even made one orbit since discovery, and has more known moons now than when the probe with a twitter handle (many do, it's @newhorizons2015) launched.

The LHC will be back online, who knows what widgets of mass and energy they'll learn about. Dark matter and dark energy are just waiting to be understood. All this done with a tool churning seriously big data.

Not bigger than the SKA, however, another amazing entity itching to look into the dark. Technology drives other technology. If you don't think this image makes you realise how insignificant we are, wait until this produces data. More data than society can currently handle, in fact.

Meditation

More of this required. We're encouraging it's return amongst our development teams. I find there is so much value in become more self aware. Put the smartphone down for a little while, allow yourself to get bored occasionally. It's healthy [citation needed]

2015

No predictions this year, it's going to be big enough as it is. Book, Kscope, APEX5 - no need to add to that!

Just remember, if it's 2015 and I bump into you, if you know there is a pool table nearby and I'll gladly play a game over a tasty beer.

Ramble over.

Where February went

(not to scale)

When it comes to blogging, I completely skipped the month of February - even after I said I'd average one post per week, thought I have an excellent excuse... my wife & I had a baby girl ;-)

Even though I had posts pre-drafted, I thought I'd just cut the noose & envelop myself right into those first few weeks with our girl. It was an enjoyable time, and I'm torn coming back to work I really enjoy.

I couldn't not read in my time off. Our girl is treating us really well and spent time enjoying a great Clarke/Baxter book. I also found myself flipping through Twitter & my RSS reader occasionally and saw some interesting posts & developments particularly in the Oracle world. Some I e-mailed myself to get back to and will be posting about in the near future - get my average back up ;-)

First day back was a bit of a struggle - while APEX5 Early Adopter is sitting there waiting for me to play - I was dusting off an APEX 3.x application and doing some Oracle Forms maintenance.
Luckily I have a few other small projects I look forward to sinking my teeth into - technology has stalled my play with PhoneGap; I have a 2nd edition book to review; and a few pseudo-exams to try; and I'm writing a jQuery presentation.

Onward!

2013 Blog Review

Just like every other tom, dick & harry on the internet, I thought I'd look back at the year that was.
Keep an eye out for interesting tangential and useful links.

A vague attempt at humour

Readership continues to grow. Rapidly. From my first full year (2010) with 5k visits, I'm now at 50k visits & 69k page views for 2013, averaging 70 posts per year - cool stuff!

I've been impressed with the growth of referals from google/yahoo/bing searches, and the top pages reflect that in regard to the year published - four from previous years.
Either people are searching for these topics (as search terms suggest), and/or people are bookmarking/remembering my blog as a place to visit - so thank you.

On blogging

Other things come above raw numbers, however, and what I find enjoyable about my job is learning. Learning things well comes with trying to describe it to others. 

That being said, I think I've got the knack of blogging regularly. This year I tried to output one technical entry per week, usually on a Wednesday, but it always depends on the post. I found a oraclenerd's 2009 review, and he had an era where he was posting something every day or so. I'm happy with one a week, with maybe the odd non-technical thrown in.

As many bloggers do, I have plenty of ideas in an e-mail folder - and that thing about learning? I find converting snippets of code & thought into blog posts a good source of reference and when using a tool like APEX you need your references only a click or two away.

I think I'll be further updating my blog reference map - I'm starting to use that frequently now, along with my recently sorted APEX bookmarks that includes documentation, how-tos and sample apps.

Issues

I've switched to google+ commenting, and while I like the integration - I'm missing people's comments, not seeing accurate comment counts in the blog homepage. Searching in chrome hiccups when it detects the site you want to search on - did the same thing as the search widget - no search results.

I'm considering moving to an APEX based blogging platform - but it might tempt me to import my back catalogue using XML from Google Takeout. Wouldn't that be fun?

So now onto the pages and behaviours that make this journey interesting.

Top visited pages

Note which year some of these were published - only two-ish from 2013.

1. Upgrading to apex 4.2 in three steps (2012) -- done on my laptop, basics only
2. CSS pulldown menu (May 2013) -- common request, neat solution
3. Form report tutorial (2011) -- what I mostly aim for in this blog
4. Modify login page (2011) -- includes link to modifying workspace page
5. A common oracle error (2012) - an experiment based on some search results. Hypothesis verified.
6. Tree region use case (Feb 2013) -- honourable mentioned because of when published

Top Referrers

Thank you for those linking to my pages, talking about them, reading them, searching & opening them. I hope you find things as useful as I do. There are also some predictable behavioural differences compared to 2012.

1. ODTUG - Not surprising since moving from apexblogs.info
      #63 apexblogs.info - down 100%
2. Twitter - I post all posts here, given recent social media trends, and #oraclapex, I'd expect some throughput
3. scoop.it - should bloggers be concerned? it seems to attribute authors and encourage site visits. WOT doesn't say anything nasty.
4. orana.info - from nothing to something? I was added in 2009, but only 1 visit recorded from 2012?
5. apex.oracle.com - I've referred to my posts a few times when answering questions
6. Feedly - of course... long live google reader!
7. Feedburner - must relate to greader? down 61%

I found apex blogger love at a number of places. A humbling pleasure it is to be on people's blogroll.

1. #10 oracle-and-apex.com - on all things extending apex (only a comment and backlink?)
2. #12 www.oraclealchemist.com - ACEriffic all-sorts (a mention... in a massive collection of 12c articles)
3. #13 mikesmithers.wordpress.com - The anti-kyte (blogroll)
4. #14 oraculix.wordpress.com (a mention regarding coalesce)
5. #20 sqlcur.blogspot.com (a mention about a post on trees)
6. #23 dbswh.webhop.net - an APEX jQuery guru I may collaborate with this year (blogroll)
7. #49 oracleinsights.blogspot.com - a fellow Aussie (mention)
8. #68 jeffkemponoracle.com - many woven interactions with this fellow Perth blogger, who unknowingly seeded my drive to blog.
9. #81 inside-oracle-apex.com - good internal APEX resource (a few mentions, comments)

My top 10

I perused the 2013 archive and decided on favourite posts of my own - either those I visit regularly as a reference, or those that have helped my journey as a software developer.

1. Learning APEX - I'd recommend these particular books depending on where you are on the spectrum.
2. Customising workspace login - I do this for training, differentiating environments or just being a control freak.
3. Starting jQuery - I started to do stuff with jQuery, beginning with client side features I remembered doing in Oracle Forms. Then I moved to tarting up reports.
4. Customising plug-ins - it's easy to tinker & learn with other people's plugins. I've played a lot with Enkitek's navbar.
5. Lists shared component - I've really appreciated the simbiosis between lists & templates. You can APEX-ify just about anything you see on the web, typically with a List template.
6. Performance - I've made a number of discoveries this year regarding performance. A few of them are in my draft folder already.  
7. Published! - I'm a published author, of sorts - a screencast/video series on Oracle APEX techniques. Not a bad first effort, I think.
8. 12c - whether c is for cloud or consolidation - it sounds like fun - I want in.
9. Off topic fav - Tim Minchin is an entertainer + educator - an edutainer, if you will. I plan to share more off-topic randomness this year, I hope you don't mind. Twitterers get it already, google+ posts are mostly science/tech.
10. Consuming plug-ins - having trouble implementing someone's plug-in? Try this sample application with accompanying instructions.

A fun 'top 5' - cities

Just for giggles.

1. Bangalore
2. London
3. Perth -- my home city
4. Chennai
5. Moscow
6. ...
7. #7 NY (top US city)

Predictions

At the start of 2013 I made promises regarding posts on mobile, RW, Ubuntu and what search terms showed me.

• I haven't explored the mobile theme as much as I'd hoped, but I've been involved in a great tablet project. 
• RWD pains me and I'm still getting the hang of manipulating APEX's templates. I wonder how much this will change in APEX5.
• Ubuntu's been flowing like pitch (again), but I have been learning plenty of jQuery. I'm really loving it and plan to continue sharing things I've learnt - one in the form of a prezi.
• 4.2.y did not deliver a third user interface - but I imagine they held back to make sure it's delivered even better in APEX5.
• Search terms... meh, I just went where things took me

I did finish the year creating a few simple item plug-ins. That's a garden being cultivated, I'm not sure what it will bring but I'm keen to explore more. The penny has dropped and the gates are open!

As hinted, in 2014 I predict heaps of posts about APEX5, looking at IDE, modals, interactive reports, templates, tablets, editing layouts & hopefully not lacking improvements in release management & page/region caching control. No doubt APEX will deliver other surprises to find along the way.

This year I also hope to implement a PhoneGap delivery; learn more about jQuery; and deliver some more public facing APEX applications.  It would be nice to develop on 12c, but I'm not holding my breath.


Here's to averaging a post per week!

ps - I'm also increasingly curious about Big Data...

2012 Blog Review

Last year I reviewed the outcomes of my blog, so I've decided to make it an annual event.

I tried hard this year to become a regular blogger, despite many things getting in the way. The key is certainly setting time aside and writing a bunch at the same time, scheduling them for later. This only takes me so far, since I have many ideas labelled in my e-mail, yet only a dozen or so currently in the schedule.

I've certainly found it rewarding. Blogging about Oracle has opened up a number of opportunities for me. It's also a useful way to affirm knowledge, and be a great reference for the future. I'm sure a number of hits are from me looking up information I know exists!

A telling metric is a comparison to last year - thank you to all my readers, old & new!

It seems late December is a quiet time...

According to Google Analytics, these are the top viewed pages for 2012

1. APEX 4.2 Wish List - It seems a lot of people wanted a say in this, bring on APEX5
2. Wrong number or types of arguments - a common error, perhaps?
3. Modifying your APEX login page - simple post, but popular concept.
4. APEX Tutorial - Form & Report sharing same page - another "grassroots" post
5. Automating APEX backups from DB - I'm glad this one's popular

Notably, #3 & #4 were written in second half of 2011, and #5 was from February 2010.

Most visits were from (what I interpret to be) Google search, then direct. About the same from feedburner & apexblogs.info, and a fast growing number from Twitter - but a mere dent compared to Google search.
Notably, Bing is down the list - below ODTUG!

Again, the US constitutes most of my readers, with India becoming a new player. UK & Germany now rank above Australian visits, which is a pleasing sign to me that it's useful to others and not just friends of friends in my home country.

Browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE respectively

Three times as many mobile devices as the year before, but still only a fraction. iPad by far most popular, followed closely by iPhone.

Search terms were interesting, and may help drive what I write about in 2013. I've tried to be more aware of SEO issues when constructing the posts and preparing meta-data. "oracle pivot" was most popular; searches involving upcoming versions always a mainstay; "pls-306" explains my 2nd most popular page; "apex tutorial" is what caught my eye; "paul verevis" from those searching for details of our fallen friend; "oracle apex performance" is down the list, something I'd like to see more frequent, along with "apex security"
Finally, I can see what would be mainly me: "site:grassroots-oracle.com some keywords"

Responsive Web Design

At some point we should also see APEX5, but potentially before that I might suggest another release that allows for a third user interface, allowing for design that suits the three major screen sizes shown above. 3-4", 7-10", and desktops - mobile, tablet, desktop.

So in 2013, keep an eye out for many little APEX tips; continued commentary in Thursday Thought; continued Oracle Community announcements; and my prediction - plenty of posts regarding APEX mobile and Responsive Web Design.
Should I find the time to mitigate ongoing frustrations, I will also increase the frequency of the Ubuntu tag. I also see a presentation coming out of this.

Scott

Grassroots blog self reference map

I've published a page you'll find linked in the top menu to a list of articles I've posted on this blog.
grassroots-oracle.com/p/blog-reference-map.html

It's not all of them, and I can never promise it will be up-to-date - of course a google search also works
(or the little Search Me widget in the side-bar)

Let me google that for you

I will be using it as a reference page for myself - quick browser search to find content I know I have and need some syntax from.

I've had this drafted for a long time, but for some reason it wouldn't publish.  I had a moment of inspiration and just re-created the page.

Scott

New Perth Blogger - Phil Robinson

Are you sick of blogs to focused on technical details or tuning hoo-ha?

Probably not, but you may appreciate a new blog from fellow Perth-ite Phil Robinson.

lonsdalesystems.blogspot.com.au 

His content won't be technical from an Oracle perspective, but he'll probably shed some light on other ideas such as modelling; testing & software quality; and just outside-the-box style ideas.

He's been a trainer for many years throughout Australia & South East Asia; he's well published; and is always a pleasure to talk to.

You'll also find him on Twitter @lonsdalesystems

I look forward to seeing his content as a blogger.

Scott

2012 - Preparation meets opportunity

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Seneca

This came on the back of a conversation today with a friend of mine, he sent me an e-mail with another quote from Seneca, a 1st century Roman philosopher - and as I started to write this post I thought it tied in well this post from Michael Crump that I found in my twitter feed - 11 Things every Software Developer should be doing in 2012.

I thought I'd add my mentations...

1. Get on Twitter - I did this in 2011. I was reluctant at first - another social media stream? Twitter, really? I was slow at first, but now I'm seeing it's value. Aside from the reasons Michael provided, it's a great networking tool.
2. Read StackOverflow daily - I haven't been able to get into StackOverflow. I think I'm getting plenty of that information from other sources when I can. Certainly as a beginner I would recommend sites like that, but as the cynical "Dirt" commenter suggested - asking is good, answers - not so much. I can't say I'm fluent enough to know how much chaff is in the responses, but when I was learning I went to an authoritative source - AskTom.
3. Start a blog - I'm not sure if I'm prepared to do that ;-)
4. Get out there - I agree 100% Your local user group is a great start. Here in Australia, AUSOUG holds regular events in many states. In WA we try to have a seminar once a month, and we have our annual conference series. Networking gold - plus you learn stuff alone the way and get free beer & pizza ;-)
5. Carry around a modern phone - While I don't agree with the judgement of people based on what they own, use or wear, it is certainly a useful device in many ways - and just another way to help stay in touch with the industry.
6. Embrace mobile - His comments about every developer will create a mobile app - really? I don't want to sound lacking in foresight, but surely with the vast array of programming languages around (pardon the pun), many programmers will be successful without going near a contemporary phone. That being said, in the Oracle world - 2012 will be the year of the mobile - think about what's coming in Apex 4.2
7. Learn at least one design pattern - I'm not sure how applicable this is to the Oracle world. Instead, perhaps study database design a little closer.
8. Set reachable goals each and every year - Goal setting is a big can of worms. True, I set myself goals, but I don't beat myself up if something gets in the way. Last year I aimed to learn Ubuntu, that's been very slow going. However, along the way I've taken grasp of many other opportunities. And I might look at it more this year, along with plug-ins and mobile.
9. Learn a different programming language - This could be tough, however I encountered Code Academy recently, and if I get into gear I might use it to become more proficient with JavaScript.
10. Boost your confidence - I agree with "Dirt" - no brainer. Trouble is, for some it isn't. I was adolescent once battling depression, and it doesn't necessarily come easy. The first time I changed employer I wasn't confident either - just keep your eyes open and be aware.
11. Read blogs/programming books/magazines - Highly recommended. I have a collection of RSS feeds now, or you could just visit aggregators such as apexblogs.info or orana.info. I have a few programming books on the go, including technical reviews which are win-win. And surely you've subscribed to the Oracle magazine in some form? Don't limit yourself to Oracle or programming sources either. I have many feeds related to my science based interests, and I learn writing skills from them also - besides they can be fun to read.

What do you reckon? Any other big ones not listed?

Scott

And no, the world will not end this year.

2011 Blog Review

I ventured into google analytics the other day to check out some browser stats, the general result is positive, by the way - 42% Firefox, 27% Chrome & 20% IE, Safari only down at 4%.

But what I thought I'd do is have a look at last years stats - it seems to be the thing to do this time of year...

Off the bat I'm happy with over 50% increase in page views compared to 2010. I don't care so much about specific numbers, but it's good to know whatever I'm doing is expanding. I'm quite motivated to write more often this year - I already have a bunch scheduled - once a week every Wednesday is the aim. Plus any random stuff I might put up, usually on a lighter note on Friday.

I'm happy I had the motivation one week while on the road to re-design the blog to bring it into this decade. It looks less tacky and a little bit more thought out. There's still a few little things I want to touch up, but it will do for now. Other projects on the go first...

As for what people are reading, in 2010 here are the top 5 pages (behind root)

1. Short circuit evaluations - I promoted this topic a bit, I'm a big fan of COALESCE
2. Another Apex 4.0 feature for Forms - Tree view in Apex 4.0
3. Why I use Google Chrome for Oracle Apex - because it's awesome and light!
4. Using JQuery dialog boxes - Very handy
5. Automating Apex backups from DB - backup backup backup

In 2011 we moved along to more focused pages

1. Presentations - I think my Apex Security one bumped those stats up
2. A mash of Oracle related thoughts - lots of distinct topics, looking back
3. Automating Apex backups from DB - up from fifth, good work backing up!
4. Useful Oracle Apex URLs - Popular with those learning
5. Apex in Amazon Cloud - Listen out this year, I'll probably be doing a cloud implementation in 2012 and I'll be sure to blog about it - and probably do a prezi in October.

Most weren't hugely out of the ball park, although last year 1st had 50% more hits than 5th, but it does show what people specifically read I guess, as opposed to strolling past on apexblogs.info

Most visitors are from US by far, Australia distant second, then UK, India, Germany just pipping Netherlands. Canada-Russia equal, then drops away.

Top mobile devices - iPhone, iPad, (not set), Samsung Galaxy S (probably me ;-), HTC Sappire

Windows order magnitude more than Mac, then Linux.

And finally top search terms - all fairly obvious. "Oracle" three times more than "oracle apex jquery datepicker"; some not provided; "triangle circle square", "oracle apex", "apex amazon cloud", "apex post calculation computation", "apex login page", "oracle apex 4.2"

The last one is interesting since it I published my wish list in early Jan, but accidentally published it as December when I first drafted it. It falls in the 2011/12 archive - so I wonder how that gets counted in their queries ;-)

There are no major milestones to come, I haven't reached 200 posts yet, so in time... I'm glad I started.

I'll have to remember to do this next year and compare!

Photo by Robbert van der Steeg - check this one out!

Blog re-name & re-design (round 1)

Some of the more astute of you - or those that may have taken notice to the final "slide" of my Apex security presentation at the AUSOUG conference - may have noticed that I registered a new name for my blog.

There were a few reasons for this. Initially it took some time for me to decide on a name when I decided to start blogging, and in hindsight I thought it needed a re-jig. (my personal gmail account could probably do with the same adjustment)

I also thought that after getting into the groove of blogging, it was time to select a name that suited my particular style and removed the blogspot moniker.

So I've chosen the following:

grassroots-oracle.com

I've updated the about me page to describe this choice a little further. You may also notice I've got some other tabs across the top for common information you might like to view - using bloggers ability to create Pages for this very purpose. Feel free to check them out.

For those of you visiting my actual page as opposed to viewing through an RSS feed or aggregator, you may also notice the blog design has changed dramatically.

I've finally taken advantage of some of the new tools blogger provides. I don't think I've finished yet though. One reason - I'm on the road, it's really late, and I'm using my phone tether to work on the net.
The other reason - I like to sit on things for a while to see how a like it, and see if any other ideas come up. I'm also not quite happy with the colour scheme - I'm a little spoilt for choice and I wasn't quite ready to perform those finer adjustments.

I also think there may be some other ramifications from my template of choice - I notice my favicon has disappeared, and it seems I need to re-apply my syntax highlighting. Ahh, the life of a software developer...

And if you're wondering about the background image in the logo - I took that in my backyard using my smartphone, plus a little trickery - no software involved, except of course adding the text.

I hope you like the adjustments so far. If you have any tips or ideas, feel free to let me know.