Sumner Technologies Blog

Dallas Texas Public Training Dates Announced

Doug Gault — 2010-01-11 05:01

We've just added several Dallas, Texas based training dates to our public course schedule.

Classroom Based Public Training

Introduction to Oracle APEX I - March 22, 2010 (3 days)
Introduction to Oracle APEX II - March 25, 2010 (2 days)
Intermediate Oracle APEX - April 5, 2010 (2 days)
Troubleshooting and Debugging APEX - April 7, 2010 (1 day)

Discounts

Qualified companies can receive up to 10% off the cost of their booking. Contact us to find out if your company qualifies.

Questions, or want private on-site training?

Should you have any questions about the courses, technical requirements or want to discuss private on-site training, please send us a note at info@sumnertech.com or call us at (703) 879-4615. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Oracle SQL Developer 2.1 Includes Reports from Sumner Technologies' Doug Gault

Doug Gault — 2009-12-15 02:12

Later today, SQL Developer 2.1 will be released into production, and with it comes an early Christmas present for the APEX developers among us.

For those of you who have seen my performance tuning presentations, you may recognize two of the new reports under the Data Dictionary -> Application Express tree node.

Active Sessions & Application Statistics were written by yours truly and included with the production release by Kris Rice and team. Here's a snap of the SVN check-in that Kris sent me!

The Active Sessions report is very similar to the one in the Database Administration section, but focuses very specifically on sessions that are running as part of APEX. Since APEX uses session pooling you won't necessarily always catch it in the act, but this report is invaluable when you have long running APEX sessions.

On the other hand, data in the Application Statistics report is available all the time, and is constantly being updated based on application usage. The application shows many statistics about how an application is running.

Please note: The Application Statistics set of reports relies on the APEX_WORKSPACE_ACTIVITY_LOG view and therefore the data shows only the last 2 weeks of activity. If you have implemented any type of archiving for this data, you'll need to copy and edit this report to make sure it's seeing the archive data as well as what is stored in the activity log.

Anyway, this just goes to show that the guys and gals on the SQL DEVELOPER team definitely listen to community input.

NetFlix Drag and Drop Walkthrough Now Available

Doug Gault — 2009-12-10 04:48

At OOW 2009 and APEXPosed this year, I presented on how to recreate the NetFlix Drag & Drop interface using APEX and jQuery. It was thankfully greeted with great enthusiasm.

Since then many people have asked for the presentation so that they could recreate the effect themselves. The slide set really wasn't a walkthrough as much as it was a progression of code snippets with very little narration. To address this I set aside some time to create a fully narrated walkthrough of the presentation, including the starter app, code snippets, and a full explaination of the code.

You can download it from here: Building a Netflix Queue-like UI in APEX

A special thanks to Niels de Bruijn for proofreading and first walkthough.

Doug

Listen to Scott Spendolini and Steven Feuerstein Discuss APEX and PL/SQL

Scott Spendolini — 2009-11-17 08:18

At APEXposed 2009 in Atlanta, Scott Spendolini sat down with Steven Feurstein to discuss all things APEX & PL/SQL with ODTUG's John King. You can watch their discussion here:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Public Course Schedule Updated

Doug Gault — 2009-11-02 10:20

We've just announced a new set of public and on-line training dates:

Classroom Based Public Training

Alexandria, Virginia :

Introduction to Oracle APEX I - December 14th, 2009 (3 days)
Introduction to Oracle APEX II - December 17th, 2009 (2 days)

These two sessions will be discounted even more than normal. Intro to APEX I will be only $1200 per student, and Intro to APEX II will be only $800. And if you sign up for both classes, you can save another $100 and take both for only $1900 per student!

Salt Lake City, Utah :

Introduction to Oracle APEX I - January 18th, 2010 (3 days)
Introduction to Oracle APEX II - January 21st, 2010 (2 days)
Intermediate Oracle APEX - January 25th, 2010 (3 days)
Troubleshooting and Debugging Oracle APEX - January 28th, 2010 (1 day)
APEX Installation and Administration - January 29th, 2010 (1 day)

On-Line Based Public Training

We are also offering a number of public online classes which feature the same exact same content as our instructor-led classes, and are conducted over a web conference and toll-free phone line, making it easy to attend from either work or home. Each session will begin at 12:00 PM ET and run for approximately four hours.

Intermediate Oracle APEX - November 16th, 2009 (five 4-hour sessions)
Introduction to Oracle APEX I - February 1st, 2010 (five 4-hour sessions)
Introduction to Oracle APEX II - February 10th, 2010 (three 4-hour sessions)

If you register more than one student from your organization for an online class, each student will receive a 10% discount.

Questions, or want private on-site training?

Should you have any questions about the courses, technical requirements or want to discuss private on-site training, please send us a note at info@sumnertech.com or call us at (703) 879-4615. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Sumner Technologies and ODTUG Win 2009 Oracle Innovation Award

Scott Spendolini — 2009-09-27 08:45

Sumner Technologies along with ODTUG are proud to announce that they will be receiving a 2009 Oracle Innovation Award for their use of Oracle Application Express as the underlying technology for ODTUG's website & member database. Oracle Innovation Awards recognize customers who have used Oracle technologies to innovate and change the way their organizaions do business for the better. Winners of the award will be recognized at Oracle Open World in San Francisco this year. You can watch the video that was submitted here.

For more information about Oracle Innovation Awards, please visit: http://www.oracle.com/innovation/innovation-awards.html

Watch Scott Spendolini Discuss APEX with OTN's Jeff Erickson

Scott Spendolini — 2009-07-23 10:50

Jeff Erickson from the Oracle Technology Network sat down with Scott Spendolini at ODTUG this past June to discuss Oracle Application Express and what customers are currently using it for. You can watch the interview here.

APEX Remote Debugging - Revisited

Doug Gault — 2009-06-26 03:16

I'm sure that by now most people are familiar with David Peake's article called The Power of Two, in which he outlines how to remotely debug PL/SQL code that is executed by calling an APEX page. But I learned something new about remote debugging with APEX while at the ODTUG Kalaidoscope conference that I was not previously aware of.

David's article states that, with the correct grants, and by surrounding the code you want to debug with

dbms_debug_jdwp.connect_tcp('localhost',4000);
...
dbms_debug_jdwp.disconnect;

you can use SQL-DEVELOPER to remotely connect to the session and step through the code.

So, the thing I learned is that if you use the word "REMOTE" in the DEBUG position of the URL, APEX will automatically surround calls to stored PL/SQL code with the appropriate dmbs_debug_jdwp calls so that you don't have to alter your code.

This may be something that I just missed, but even after Googling it, I only came up with a couple hidden mentions. Either way, I figured it was worth posting just in case someone else had missed it too.

Voting Time at Oracle Mix Vote-A-Session...

Doug Gault — 2009-06-16 05:25

I believe last year was the first year that Oracle allowed the user community at large to choose some of the presentations that were to be given at Oracle Open World. They did so via Oracle Mix, and it looks as if they are doing the same again this year.

In I've just been informed that my presentation Replicating NetFlix Movie Queue Drag & Drop functionality with APEX and jQuery has been added to the list over at the Oracle Mix Vote-A-Session web site.

Here's the abstract...

While APEX allows you to create very robust web based applications in a very short timeframe, there are areas where the UI can be extend into the realm of Web 2.0.

jQuery is one of the most popular open source JavaScript libraries, and can be used to add very sophisticated user interface functionality to web based applications. To demonstrate this functionality the presentation will show step-by-step how APEX and jQuery can be used to fairly easily duplicate the functionality of the NetFlix Movie Queue.

Attendees will walk away with an understanding of the basic structure of the jQuery library, how it can be integrated into APEX and used to implement some very impressive interface techniques.

So, if you're interested in taking the APEX UI a little bit further with the help of some cool and relatively easy to use JavaScipt, then go and VOTE!

Announcing the Official Sumner Technologies Blog

Scott Spendolini — 2009-06-15 11:48

I'm happy to announce that we have started a new official Sumner Technologies corporate blog! We'll be using this blog to provide information about products, services and training classes that we provide as well as unique technical tips and tricks on APEX and other Oracle-related technologies.

Doug Gault, who recently joined the Sumner Technologies team from Hotsos, will also be contributing to the blog. Doug's background is in both APEX and performance tuning at the SQL and PL/SQL level, so expect to see some posts covering both of those topics.

And one more remider - if you're heading to ODTUG next week, be sure to stop by and say hello - we'll be in the exhibition hall.

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