Benjamin Intsiful on Oracle APEX

On the 14. of december the APEX version 4.2.1.00.08 was released.  The Patchnotes are available under  APEX 4.2.1 Patchnotes . The fixed bugs are listed up  here . A short look over all fixed bugs sumerizes that the most fixes are belonging to the mobile theme and components of APEX. These Know Iusses are still open bugs: Developer Toolbar Not Available for Mobile Applications Page Submit Actions Not Working for Some Longer Mobile Select Lists Issues with Editing Items After Upgrade Theme 25 Alert Region Does Not Support Multiple Page Items in the Same Row Here are changes in the behaviour of APEX Maximum Width for Textareas Textarea can use less then maximum width Enhanced Security for Report Links JavaScript/jQuery can be mixed up with column name syntax javascript:alert( 'Delete # NAME #' ); jQuery Mobile updated to 1.2.0 AnyChart 6 AnyChart 6.0.11 is included Resizing of Charts on Mobile Page Now its possible to resize charts in the mobil...

Oracle has announced early adopters version of APEX release 4.2 @ https://apexea.oracle.com/pls/apex A whole host of new functionality has been added to APEX proving not only that Oracle is committed to pushing forward with APEX but also how great a tool it is. Some of the new functionality includes; Keep switches between Mobile and Desktop Applications  A faster application builder wizard allowing for simple applications to be built very quickly  Enhanced charting using both flash charting and HTML5 charts  Use of HTML5 page items with new item types such as sliders and additional attributes and  many many more features! The look and feel to the Application builder has also come on leaps and bounds and looks very impressive.  Enhanced Wizards Enhancements have also been made to the wizards allow for quicker generation of objects. Delivered with APEX 4.2 are the same applications available with the Oracle Cloud – these pre-built applicati...

DATE is the datatype that we are all familiar  with when we think about representing date and time values. It has the ability to store the month, day, year, century, hours, minutes, and seconds. It is typically good for representing data for when something has happened or should happen in the future.  The problem with the DATE datatype is its' granularity  when trying to determine a time interval between two events when the events happen within a second of each other. This issue is solved with the TIMESTAMP datatype. In order to represent the date stored in a more readable format, the TO_CHAR function has traditionally been wrapped around the date: SQL> SELECT  TO_CHAR(hiredate,'DD.MM.YYYY:HH24:MI:SS')  "hiredate"   FROM employees; hiredate ------------------- 17.12.1980:00:00:00 20.02.1981:00:00:00 The SYSDATE pseudo-column shows the current system date and time. Adding 1 to SYSDATE will advance the date by 1 day. Use fractions to add hours...

the  (+)  syntax is obsolete, proprietary syntax that Oracle used for years to accomplish the same results as an  OUTER JOIN . I assume they adopted their proprietary syntax before SQL-92 decided on the standard syntax. Using standard SQL  OUTER JOIN  syntax (which is now supported by all major RDBMS implementations) would be the following example : SELECT     Table1 . Category1 ,     Table1 . Category2 ,     COUNT (*) AS Total ,     COUNT ( Table2 . Stat ) AS Stat FROM Table1   LEFT OUTER JOIN Table2 ON ( Table1 . PrimaryKey = Table2 . ForeignKey ) GROUP BY Table1 . Category1 , Table1 . Category2 ; Which basically means - All rows from  Table1  are included in the query result. Where there are matching rows in  Table2 , include those rows (repeating content from  Table1  if there are multiple matching rows in  Table2 ). Where there are no matching rows ...

Having seen this question often (yesterday again in the   OTN APEX forum ) and having had the same problem when I first started with APEX, I thought to blog about it. When you make your first application in APEX you typically have as default page 1 or the login page (101). If you want to change your default (first) page you need to have a look at three different places. Let's say we want to have page 9 as default page: 1)  Application Builder > Your Application > Page 101 > Processes (Page Processing) > Login Change Process to: wwv_flow_custom_auth_std.login( P_UNAME => :P101_USERNAME, P_PASSWORD => :P101_PASSWORD, P_SESSION_ID => v('APP_SESSION'), P_FLOW_PAGE => :APP_ID||':9' ); Whenever somebody logs in we want him to go to page 9. 2)  Shared Components > Security > Authentication Schemes > Your Authentication Change the Logout URL: wwv_flow_custom_auth_std.logout?p_this_flow=&APP_ID....

To configure the embedded PL/SQL gateway: 1. Go to the  $ORACLE_HOME/apex  directory. 2. Use SQL/Plus to connect as SYS to 11g database where APEX is installed. SYS AS SYSDBA@db11r1> @apxconf PORT ----------8080 Enter values below for the XDB HTTP listener port and the password for the Application Express ADMIN user. Default values are in brackets [ ]. Press Enter to accept the default value. Enter a password for the ADMIN user [] admin_password Enter a port for the XDB HTTP listener [ 8080] ...changing HTTP Port PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. Session altered. ...changing password for ADMIN PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. Commit complete. 3. Unlock the ANONYMOUS account. SYS AS SYSDBA@db11r1> ALTER USER ANONYMOUS ACCOUNT UNLOCK; User altered. 4. Enable Oracle XML DB HTTP server SYS AS SYSDBA@db11r1> EXEC DBMS_XDB.SETHTTPPORT(8080); PL/SQL procedure successfully comple...

I often say "I learn something new about Oracle every day".  It really is true - there is so much to know about it, it is hard to keep up sometimes. It is a  little sqlplus quirk that I probably knew at one point but totally forgot.  People run into problems with &'s in sqlplus all of the time as sqlplus tries to substitute in for an &variable.  So, if they try to select '&hello world' from dual - they'll get: SQL> select '&hello world' from dual; Enter value for hello:  old   1: select '&hello world' from dual new   1: select ' world' from dual 'WORLD ------  world As the result. One solution is to "set define off" to disable the substitution (or set define to some other character).  Another oft quoted solution is to use  chr(38) -  SQL> select chr(38)||'hello world' from dual;   I never liked that one personally.  lol :)   What i suggest is this  SQL> select ...