2012 Conference Program Announced

Today the program for the 2012 Perth AUSOUG Conference was announced.

First of all, I know it will be a Monday morning but there is a reason not to miss the opening address - we have invited ultra marathon runner Bernadette Benson to talk to us about the discipline it takes to stay focused.

Now  it's hard to limit to the just the highlights, but here goes:

Oracle

It's a conference talking about Oracle after all, and here are some of the strengths they're bringing to the table

• Tom Kyte - it doesn't matter what they are, and there's two of them!!! 
• Tom Kyte - did I mention he's doing two presentations?
• Chris Muir - with some JDeveloper 12c announcements and ADF new features
• Melanie Caffrey - talking DBA stuff on auditing with flashback and testing with edition based redefinition
• John Hansen - Fusion strategic roadmap
• Graham Wood - Active Session History (ASH)
• Keith Laker - settles the debate on Big Data
• Cliff Godwin - EBS strategy & GM update
• Chris Muir - Developing for smart devices - web & native 

Mobile

It seems the buzz-word this year is mobile development, and this offering won't drown you with it - but instead offers a great cross-examination of what's out there. These are on top of Chris Muir's smart-devices talk.

• Penny Cookson - with some help from Chris Noonan will impress us with JDeveloper ADF dashboards on iPads - yep, it'll be interactive 
• Scott Wesley (me) - another interactive foray into APEX mobile (powerpoint free)
• Kevin Payne - case study involving mobile development
• Mark Lancaster - bootstrapping APEX for all devices

Development

Are you a developer? I'm positive there is something for you in every time-slot - starting with these selections

• Matthew Carrigy - case study on government project converting Forms to JDeveloper ADF
• Jeff Kemp - guiding us through Alexandria, and another on some Oracle DB gotchas
• David Wilkes - beginner's guide to SQL, PL/SQL
• Connor McDonald - SQL Tuning 101
• Connor McDonald - Analytics
• Gabriel Ilarda - SQL Data Modeler

DBA

The community is strong in Perth, so we've got to cover many bases.

• Tim Middleton - Web Logic Server 12
• Yury Velikanov - Direct NFS
• Damon Grummet - Case study on ODA
• Barbara Rabinowicz - Oracle VM for beginners
• Marc Fielding - Large scale consolidation
• Arjen Visser - Replication concepts
• Gavin Soorma - 11g Optimizer plan stability

EBS

E-Business Suite and other Fusion applications are another must.

• Dr Patricia Dues - BI case study in the public sector; and EBS R12 upgrade
• Howard Ong - looking at the current state of Business Intelligence
• Tony Scholefield - R12 upgrade case study
• Valery Hickey - Cloning EBS
• Andrew Howard - Oracle Spatial case study
• Jags Jawalekar - Oracle iProcurement

And then some...

In addition to the standard schedule, we have some other events over the 3 day period from 29th-31st October

• Full day (day 3) - Real World Performance with Tom Kyte, Andrew Holdsworth & Graham Wood. I went this last year in Sydney and it's a must for DBAs and developers. Not only that, it's great value.
• Half day (day 2) - Sysadmin training workshop on Linux / Solaris 
• Primavera SIG (day 3)
• Exhibitors - we have regulars, plus Amazon Web Services will have a booth to answer your cloud questions
• Welcome reception (day 1) - Let of some steam and enjoy some drinks & nibbles with speakers, delegates, exhibitors & user group committee members.
• WIN - a trip to attend Collaborate 2013

There's even more, and no doubt I've forgotten some sessions that will be a highlight for you.

We'll close off day 2 with some thanks from Susan Rooney, Cancer Council CEO & the prize draws.

Register now! Early bird special finishes next week.

Scott Wesley

Program Chair

2012 Perth AUSOUG Conference

Using jQuery selector in APEX

The more I extend my development repertoire in APEX, the more I feel like I'm becoming a web developer as well as an Oracle technologist.

I'm still expanding my understanding on the use of jQuery, but every day I feel happier about it and see what such an amazing tool it is to extend APEX applications.

I little example today was to create a dynamic action that fires every time a checkbox on my page is changed. I wanted to do this to show a warning if no checkboxes were ticked, and I didn't want to hardcode checkbox names - so the ideal solution is to use the jQuery Selector selection type.

By using the syntax
'input:checkbox'
this dynamic action will fire as required. Further information this selector (and others) can be found in the jQuery documentation. They main thing to note for APEX is that surrounding $() is not required in this context - otherwise you receive the error
Uncaught Syntax error, unrecognized expression: $('input:checkbox')

And as a starting point if you're unfamiliar with jQuery, check out the FAQ.

I also picked up this handy e-book for $5 during an O'Reilly promotion: jQuery Pocket Reference

Edit - May 2018:

This post was very early in my understanding of dynamic actions (hence my poorly cased label), and how they relate to elements on a page. If you want an introduction to utilising this amazing feature of Oracle APEX, start here:
http://www.grassroots-oracle.com/2015/12/tutorial-include-action-button-in-report.html

SQL Developer 3.2 prepares to connect to the cloud

Have you downloaded SQL Developer 3.2 yet? check this out:

I guess Oracle Open World will have a few announcements this year...

I'm not going, but I find solace in that I'll be at the AFL grand final this year - which is the day before.
At least I know Pearl Jam is eliminated from the list of acts for the grand final - still to be announcement.

How long before someone jokes about connecting to "heaven" as a cloud connection? ;-)

pre-Insync12

BEGIN

Off to Melbourne for Insync12 today. This month's entertainment from Qantas doesn't excite me much, so instead I might nerd up & watch some Oracle presentations I worked out how to cache on my phone.

I feel horribly under-prepared this year, no thanks to any awful experience with a laptop hardware failure. Don't get me wrong, the presentation is ready to rock - but I feel behind in so many other ways.

Some key people seem to be missing from the line-up too, but I look forward to seeing interstate friends I've met over the years - it sure helps make these events more fun!

If you're there, look out for me @swesley_perth or find me State 1 Room 4.15pm Wednesday talking APEX 4.1 Security.
If you're not, maybe I'll see you in Perth in October.

Scott

GOTO domestic_airport;

2012 Perth Conference Abstracts

Just a quick note - abstract submissions for the 2012 AUSOUG Perth Conference have been extended to the 27th August... just say'n.

Head here for more info
http://www.ausoug.org.au/2020/

---

In other news, Penny & I will be at the Insync conference next week. I'm on Wednesday afternoon - but I think my different presentation technique should keep you sustained after the lunchtime feast. Not sure when Penny is, but be sure to seek us out and say hello. We look forward to seeing friends and meeting new ones.

If you're on twitter, I'll leave the green pigs up so keen an eye out for them @swesley_perth
And I'm sure @InSyncEvent will liven up shortly.
I might have some pigs with me, but they'll certainly be at the booth in Perth.

Also check out for the Western Australian Oracle User Group twitter feed - be gentle, it's still learning

Anyone considering attending, consider this - 2 day 5 stream Oracle conference, third day Real World Performance with Tom Kyte, Andrew Holdsworth and Graham Wood. Speakers at the conference will include local regulars Penny Cookson, Connor McDonald, Chris Muir (& myself), plus some of those not native to the Australian continent. We will announce those as we confirm them.

Plenty going on with the user group over next next few months. Wednesday's breakfast double header was a success - well done Anita, Kevin & Andi.
Another interesting topic next month by Jeff Kemp, plus I saw a few e-mails announcing other events. Get involved!

Scott

Fun with SQL analytical functions

I had an interesting SQL problem at work recently, and I came up with a solution that I'm not sure is completely ideal - so I thought I'd attempt to replicate it here.

Some of the complexity is lost while I obscure and simplify the problem (it involved a hierarchical query), but I think the key elements remain.

Consider a table of codes with an order sequence.

create table my_values (code varchar2(10), order_seq number(5));
insert into my_values values ('A', 10);
insert into my_values values ('A', 20);
insert into my_values values ('A', 30);
insert into my_values values ('B', 40);
insert into my_values values ('B', 50);
insert into my_values values ('C', 60);
insert into my_values values ('C', 70);
insert into my_values values ('C', 80);
insert into my_values values ('D', 90);

My requirement was to see the next and previous code. For instance, when listing B records, I wanted to see A and C in the same row - the solution screamed analytical functions so I started with my favourite:

select code, order_seq
      ,row_number() over (partition by code order by order_seq) rn
from my_values
order by order_seq;

CODE       ORDER_SEQ RN
---------- --------- --
A                 10  1 
A                 20  2 
A                 30  3 
B                 40  1 
B                 50  2 
C                 60  1 
C                 70  2 
C                 80  3 
D                 90  1

I struck the results down to just the first row for each code, incorporating lag/lead to get the info I needed.

select s.code
      ,lag(s.code) over (order by s.order_seq) my_lag
      ,lead(s.code) over (order by s.order_seq) my_lead
from 
(
  select code, order_seq
        ,row_number() over (partition by code 
                            order by order_seq) rn
  from my_values
  order by order_seq
) s
where s.rn = 1
order by order_seq;

CODE       MY_LAG     MY_LEAD  
---------- ---------- ----------
A                     B          
B          A          C          
C          B          D          
D          C                    

Finally, to combine my results I created an in-line view with a subquery factoring statement.

with sub as (
  select s.code
        ,lag(s.code) over (order by s.order_seq) my_lag
        ,lead(s.code) over (order by s.order_seq) my_lead
  from 
  (
    select code, order_seq
          ,row_number() over (partition by code 
                              order by order_seq) rn
    from my_values
    order by order_seq
  ) s
  where s.rn = 1)
select m.*, sub.my_lag, sub.my_lead
from my_values m, sub
where m.code = sub.code;

CODE       ORDER_SEQ MY_LAG     MY_LEAD  
---------- --------- ---------- ----------
A                 10            B          
A                 20            B          
A                 30            B          
B                 40 A          C          
B                 50 A          C          
C                 60 B          D          
C                 70 B          D          
C                 80 B          D          
D                 90 C                     

So my question is - any ideas for a simpler solution?

Why you should get involved with your local Oracle User Group

Thanks to our Sydney Pythian friend Yury, we have a video from last year's Oracle AUSOUG Conference available for viewing.

This was a panel discussion on why you should submit an abstract to an Oracle user group event.

It features Oracle ACE card carriers Debra Lilley, Chris Muir, Connor McDonald, Penny Cookson, Tim Hall

You can watch it via this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeXvxmrywDs or using the embedded video below.

It is conference length, and viewing via video certainly does the discussion no justice - but I hope if you are even considering / contemplating / had passing thoughts about presenting at either a conference or a monthly meetup, you might be enthused to take it a few steps further. We can certainly help you along with this, in fact on the 15th August we have 3 presenters making their debut in a Perth branch meeting with thanks to Penny's guidance.

Abstract submissions for this year's Perth conference is closing soon.

Deadline for submissions has been extended until just after the Insync Conference - get in soon!

I look forward to seeing your submission - and if you don't have time this year to prepare one, I'll be more than happy to talk with you at the conference about what your options are for getting more involved in your local user group - it will be very beneficial to your career!

Scott