Oracle APEX 4.0 Cookbook published

I am currently working in an Oracle Apex development team at Philips in Eindhoven. Two colleagues of our team  have been writing for almost a half year on their first book.
Marcel van der Plas and Michel van Zoest have produced a real good book with over 80 great recipes to develop and deploy fast, secure, and modern web applications with Oracle Application Express 4.0. After reading this book, you will be able to create feature-rich web applications in Application Express 4.0 with ease and confidence.
This book is a practical reference guide for every APEX developer and is available as paperback or as e-book: https://www.packtpub.com/oracle-apex-4-0-cookbook/book.

SQL Developer 3.0 EA released

After the introduction of the new 3.0 EA version of the Oracle Data Modeler tool, SQL Developer 3.0 Early Adopter is also released.
Oracle keeps on improving this tool, especially the DBA-features. For the new features see: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/rel3-featurelist-ea1-166831.html.
You can download this tool on the OTN-site: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/index-rel3-ea1-166825.html. 
I still hope that Oracle improves the "new downloads" section. This is not working well on the "new and improved" OTN-site!

Apex 4.0 new features

If you want a quick look at some new features of the new Apex 4.0 release have a look at the following page: http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=4600:6:0.
Also on the right of this page you can find some amazing working demo's. Have fun!

Oracle Application Express 4.0 is now Production

Oracle Application Express 4.0 is now available for download. You can download this new version on the new and improved OTN-website: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/download.html
APEX 4 Application Builder will not support using Internet Explorer 6.0 (or browsers with compatability mode of IE6).
 If you're using an outdated browser you will receive a warning message and various screens within Application Express Builder will not display or function properly. APEX Applications can still be developed that support IE6. The developers will not be able to use IE6 or IE6 compatibility browsers for development.
More information coming soon but you can download and look at this great release right now!

Oracle 11g Release 2 for Windows is available

We had to wait a little while for it but today Oracle has released 11g Release 2 for Windows. You can download it from the OTN-website: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/oracle11g/112010_win32soft.html.

New Early Adopter Release of Application Express 4.0 available

Today a new early adopter release of Application Express 4.0 came available: Early Adopter Phase II (EA2).

The URL for this new testrelease is unchanged: http://tryapexnow.com. In this relase is (finally) the websheets feature included but many other features have been added.

Try it your self!

Oracle BI EE - Conditional Formatting in Pivot Tables

In tables and pivot tables, conditional formatting helps direct attention to a data element if it meets a certain condition. For example, you can show below-quota sales figures in a certain color, or display an image such as a trophy next to the name of each salesperson who exceeds quota by a certain percent.
You do this by selecting one or more columns in the request to use, specifying the condition to meet, and then making selections for font, cell, border, and style sheet options to apply when the condition is met. The conditional formats can include colors, fonts, images, and so on, for the data and for the table cell that contains the data.
You can add multiple conditions so that the data and the table cell are displayed in one of several formats, based upon the value of the data. For example, below-quota sales can be displayed in one color, and above-quota sales can be displayed in another color.

But... conditional formats that format one column based on the value of another column are not reflected in a pivot table, but are reflected in a standard table. For example, setting the color of a region name based on the sales in that region has no effect in a pivot table. So you can in a pivot tale only define a conditional format based on the data of the same column.

But conditional formatting on multiple columns in a pivot table is (fortunately) still possible in the following way. We can do this using some simple HTML code with the administration tool in the business layer.
First we create a new column (column 3) in which we display the value of the data column (column 1). With a case statement based on the data of column 2 and column 1 (for example) we add HTML instructions for showing the data of column 1 in a red color (too low) or green color (ok):













With the cast operator we cast this new column to a varchar10 column.
Now we can add this column to the presentation layer and use it within Answers. The last thing we have to do is change the format of this column into HTML:

This seems to work perfect. It's easy to use this in the administration tool and if needed we can construct very advanced instructions for conditional formats. And by using pivot tables it is not necessary to format every individual cell.
But by using HTML it is not possible to download our pivot table to a PDF report. I am looking forward to the next release of OBIEE. Perhaps there are new opportunities in the area of conditional formatting...

Application Express 4.0 Early Adopter's Release

Curious at the new features of the upcoming new release 4.0 of Apex? Sign up for a workspace at http://tryapexnow.com. These workspaces of Oracle Application Express 4.0 Early Adopter (EA) are hosted on Amazon EC2.
The well known sample application is included and new applications with new features will become available soon.