As you can see, I added a page element to the right with the book(s) I'm currently reading. I bought Oracle JDeveloper 10g for Forms & PL/SQL Developers yesterday. Even though I'm still working on Forms projects, I think it's important to stay on top of the new technologies and get at least the basics of them down. Also on my wish list is the APEX book by Jon Scott and Scott Spendolini, it should be out next month, I can't wait.
I nearly finished my apex home accounting application, it just needs a report or two with some balance overviews. My next project will be a new website for our band. If I find the time, I'll also make the same projects with JDeveloper+ADF, could be interesting...
Tuesday, 15 May 2007
Monday, 7 May 2007
APEX and a list of Months
My colleague Dimitri will be glad to hear I started experimenting with APEX again. I have been doing my home accounting in Excel for years, and it seemed like a nice project to try and build in APEX. As I wanted the data structure to be a little different, I didn't just import the excel sheets, but designed a new data model and started from there. I might still import the excels to have the old data available in Oracle as well, even write a small ETL routine to convert to the new model. For now I'm just having fun learning a new way to make client interfaces.
One of the (mainly SQL) 'issues' I had was creating a select list with all the months of a year, in a meaningful and efficient way. I used a combination of date formatting and a row generator, you can read more about that here.
One of the (mainly SQL) 'issues' I had was creating a select list with all the months of a year, in a meaningful and efficient way. I used a combination of date formatting and a row generator, you can read more about that here.
Thursday, 3 May 2007
Are you the smartest?
I finished the last test of Oracle's "Are you the smartest?" contest yesterday, it was about SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), and it was hard...
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: AYTS is an annual contest organised by Oracle. It consists of attending four sessions of Sales Consultants presenting business solutions. This year's sessions were about BI Suite, JDeveloper & ADF, SOA Suite and Identity Management. I liked the BI and JDev sessions, the others were a case of "slow death by powerpoint" for me.
I liked the ease, transparancy and intuitive interface of the BI Suite. JDeveloper and ADF I had already worked with, and I'll admit it's an amazing and wide-ranging tool (for free!), but when it comes to building User Interfaces, my bets are on APEX. As for winning prizes (first price is a trip to Oracle Headquarters in SF, USA), I don't think I'll be among the lucky ones...
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: AYTS is an annual contest organised by Oracle. It consists of attending four sessions of Sales Consultants presenting business solutions. This year's sessions were about BI Suite, JDeveloper & ADF, SOA Suite and Identity Management. I liked the BI and JDev sessions, the others were a case of "slow death by powerpoint" for me.
I liked the ease, transparancy and intuitive interface of the BI Suite. JDeveloper and ADF I had already worked with, and I'll admit it's an amazing and wide-ranging tool (for free!), but when it comes to building User Interfaces, my bets are on APEX. As for winning prizes (first price is a trip to Oracle Headquarters in SF, USA), I don't think I'll be among the lucky ones...
Monday, 30 April 2007
Thursday, 26 April 2007
Mind Mapping as an analyzing tool
A few weeks ago I read an article by Kathy Sierra on Tablet PC's and Mind Mapping. I had only seen the technique used once before, by one of my colleagues, to organize the topics for a meeting. I thought it looked neat, but as attending or organizing meetings isn't one of my day-to-day tasks, it didn't stick to my mind.
Kathy Sierra however, is quite good at rousing enthousiasm, so I downloaded an open source mindmapper, FreeMind. I played around with it for a while, and then I got the idea to use it as an aid in extracting some structure out of a myriad of bussines rules summed up in Use Case documents. So far they've been a great help, seeing as on the project I'm working on now, there's a vast no man's land between the Use Cases and actual coding. Oh, and they look hip too. Too bad I can't post any screenshots, as the content is confidential, but there are plenty on FreeMind's Sourceforge page.
Kathy Sierra however, is quite good at rousing enthousiasm, so I downloaded an open source mindmapper, FreeMind. I played around with it for a while, and then I got the idea to use it as an aid in extracting some structure out of a myriad of bussines rules summed up in Use Case documents. So far they've been a great help, seeing as on the project I'm working on now, there's a vast no man's land between the Use Cases and actual coding. Oh, and they look hip too. Too bad I can't post any screenshots, as the content is confidential, but there are plenty on FreeMind's Sourceforge page.
Tuesday, 24 April 2007
A Modest Destiny (Sean Howard)
I'm a big fan of Sean Howard's pixel art comics. If you're into strong characters, witty humor and well-constructed plot twists, check out A Modest Destiny, a series already spanning four episodes. The pixel art is great too, I can't imagine the time and dedication it takes to make something like that. A lot of people compare it to the old Zelda and Mario Bros graphics, but it doesn't do him justice.
Oracle nr 30 in Brandz Top 100
Millward Brown released its annual report ranking the top 100 of strongest brands measured by dollar value. Google shines at number 1, dethroning Microsoft. Oracle is on 30, SAP on 27. However, Oracle has a 28% growth in business value. It would be nice to have a more detailed analysis of this figure. I'm guessing the Fusion/Middleware catch-up is a significant factor.
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