Agenda

09:40 APEX: For Your Eyes Only

Data Protection is becoming more relevant, especially now that GDPR is a thing. Of course it is easy enough to add predicates to your reports and restrict the data shown. But how do you handle data entry? Implementing this level of security can be handled by the application, but we all know this is not the way to do it. What if the user downloads SQLcl or SQLDeveloper and sets up a connection to the database? What if we want to expose part of the data as REST Services? The most logical place to protect data is as close to where the data is stored, being the database. The Oracle database offers several methods to keep data private, such as Virtual Private Database, Redaction and Label Security to name a few. This session will cover these techniques and will show you how to interact with APEX applications.

Alex NuijtenOracle ACE Director (allAPEX)

09:40 It’s good to know your APEX backyard

When we do development in Oracle APEX, we normally spend most of our time in Page Designer ( if we should spend most of the time in SQL Developer is another topic ). But APEX so much more than Page Designer. If we look around we can find many helpful features, than can boost or at least simplify our work. Yes, it’s good if we know our own backyard ( we could also say playground ). In this presentation we will take a closer look at Supporting Objects, Application and Workspace utilities and also some of the goodies in SQL Workshop utilities.

Aljaz MaliOracle ACE Associate (Abakus Plus, d.o.o.)

09:40 Rapid(er) Application Development?

We all know that APEX is a RAD tool, but can it be even faster? Can you make a functioning application with a single click? Deploy it with a double-click? Make all this into a generic process? This lecture will show that the answer is "Yes! *" (with an asterisk, more details in the lecture). I will show how you can use some hidden APEX API-s to your advantage and how you can automate routine processes. We will explore APEX internals and discover how APEX Builder actually creates App definitions. Also I'll show how you can automate the creation Table API-s and API Views, exporting App components and creating deployment packages. The lecture is targeted to advanced developers, but new-comers might also find it interesting.

Daniel Huha (Bilog d.o.o.)
Coffe Break

10:25 Coffee Break

Relax with a good coffee and get some energy for the next sessions.

Coffee Break
Agenda

10:50 Oracle ORDS - New features you can't ignore

Oracle ORDS has added some exiting new features in the past releases (from 17.4 to 18.3). We will cover some of these useful features. Specifically the "RESTful Services Pre-Hook Function" is extremely powerful and closes some gaps so that we can implement some interesting use cases more easily. Using the Pre-Hook we can provide a PL/SQL function to set up a security context before the actual request is processed. This is typically used for Oracle's Virtual Private Database (VPD) or Real Application Security (RAS). This proves also very helpful when using the autorest functionality. Because now we can audit the end user in the trigger. This was not possible before. Also, many (pl/sql) developers are struggling with the security integration on the application server side. This is highly dependent on the application server at hand (Weblogic, Tomcat, Glassfish) and not always easy to do. The Pre-Hook comes to the rescue here as well. Now we can provide the user identity and user roles by setting the http header variables X-ORDS-HOOK-USER and X-ORDS-HOOK-ROLES. We will cover relevant use cases, lots of samples and how tos. We will provide solutions for different security integrations (e.g. with Active Directory through Kerberos) and others. The names of the typically used http header variables have been changed (e.g. X-APEX-STATUS-CODE => X-ORDS-STATUS-CODE) and the old ones will be deprecated over time. We will show you what you need to take care of NOW so that you are well prepared for future releases.

Dietmar AustOracle ACE (Opal-Consulting Dietmar Aust)

10:50 APEX Reporting Tips & Tricks

Some company want to replace their Discoverer tool with APEX, or some other just want to use APEX to get insight in their data. This presentation shows different techniques you can use in Oracle Application Express to create the reports you want. We will cover some nice features of Interactive Report and Grid, so you can use those components to its full potential. We will also show how to create custom reports by using groupings, roll-ups and analytical functions. Finally we will show how to export those reports to Excel and PDF.

Dimitri GielisOracle ACE Director (APEX R&D)

10:50 Dynamic actions for dummies

Dynamic actions for dummies Regardless if you are new to APEX or have some doubts working with Dynamic actions this might be a session for you. In this session we tack all corners of DA and how they can be utilized in your applications. Some things we will cover: How to create DA? Affected elements? Passing data between screen components and your DA? Event delegation and event bubbling? How to debug your DA? Any of this does not sound familiar then join me for 60 minutes demo loaded session.

Lino SchildenfeldOracle ACE Associate (APEX R&D)

11:40 JavaScript in APEX - do it right!

Dynamic Actions are great, but there's no APEX application where you don't need to code at least a little bit of custom JavaScript. If you don't do it right from the start, it will probably create you issues during a lifetime of your application, especially on the upgrades to new APEX versions. In this session I'll cover everything you need to know about writing nice and clean JavaScript that will be easy to maintain and that will make your upgrades as smooth as possible.

Marko Gorički (BiLog)

11:40 Make it global!

Oracle APEX from the very beginning has been prepared to support large, international projects that can be used in many different countries and need to be adapted to regional standards. During this session I will show how we can prepare fully translated and localized APEX application, that can handle different languages, text directions, time zones, calendars, date/time formats etc. I will also present how should we design our application to support all those features at database and frontend level to be ready to enter new regions and markets within hours. Just how to make it really global!

Przemysław Staniszewski (Pretius)

11:40 Know your Browser Dev Tools!

You are a database guy doing mostly PL/SQL stuff? You are new to APEX, but have a database background? You are doing APEX for several years but always struggle with web or browser things? Or you are a frontend guy, who always wanted to understand the connection between APEX frontend and backend? This session is for you! In this session you will learn how to use the included browser development tools and what benefits you can have with this knowledge. Some examples would be: - Generally understand what browser dev tools are - Client side APEX debugging (JavaScript, Dynamic Actions) - Inspect AJAX calls which deliver data from the backend - Performance analysis of client side code - Manipulate the DOM and resulting HTML of your APEX pages - Check accessibility of your pages, regions and components - Testing JavaScript before you include it in APEX development - Change existing or add new CSS for styling your application If these things are new to you or you want to refresh your knowledge on these topics you are very welcome to join my session!

Daniel HochleitnerOracle ACE (IT Consulting & Development)
Lunch Break

12:25 Lunch Break

One hour lunch to get some food and clear your head.

Lunch Break
Agenda

13:25 Demystifying OAuth: a standard for authorization

OAuth (2.0) becomes increasingly important in APEX. We see it popping up in Authentication Schemes, Web Source definitions, packages, and REST API security. What is it? Why is it so popular? How do you use it? And we have things like Social Authentication and OpenID, how do they fit into the bigger picture? This session is for those who want to understand this mysterious protocol, even if you have no experience with it so far.

Menno HoogendijkOracle ACE (Qualogy)

13:25 50 APEX plugins you should know about!

In this fun and fast-paced demonstration, I will present and demo the 50 best, free and open source 3rd Party APEX Plugins, all incorporated and working together in 1 app. Too many times have I found the right plugin for the job, only after spending countless days creating my own solution. If this also happened to you, join me in this talk for the ultimate plugin crash course. Whether it’s new item types, dynamic actions or extending APEX components like the Interactive Grid, this talk will have a plugin for everyone.

Stefan DobreDeveloper (FOEX GmbH)

13:25 A Deeper Dive into developing with APEX and Oracle Text

Many APEX applications can benefit from adding the powerful text search capabilities of Oracle Text. This presentation will show you how to quickly add these to your APEX applications. We will quickly recap the fundamentals of Oracle Text and how to integrate it with APEX. Then, using some real APEX examples, we'll dive into advanced topics, such as: - "Fuzzy" searching - Google-like highlighting of snippets in search results - Searching multilingual data - Managing stopwords - Searching data that resides outside of the database - Searching structured documents such as XML or JSON We'll look at: - Strategies for gathering and indexing textual data to be searched - Indexing of BLOBs containing PDFs or Word documents - Indexing of structured documents such as XML or JSON - Searching your data using the Oracle Text syntax - Different search types such as word, phrase, stem, etc. - Searching within tags - Google-like highlighting of snippets in search results

Niall Mc Phillips (Long Acre Sàrl)

14:25 Oracle Multilingual Engine and APEX

Have you heard of Oracle Multilingual Engine (MLE) yet? MLE is a revolutionary technology, based on Oracle's GraalVM, that will allow developers to write stored procedures in their favorite language of choice. But not only that, it leverages Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation across these languages to optimize the code regardless of programming language boundaries, data types, and execution engines. developers can write code in their favorite language and MLE will optimize and compile it for optimal execution time. But not only that, thanks to MLE APEX developers can now use JavaScript and Python inside APEX itself. In this session we will show you a live demo of what's lying ahead!

Gerald Venzl (Oracle)

14:25 45 APEX tips in 45 Minutes

A fast paced session with lots of useful APEX tips and tricks. You might already be aware of some, but I can also guarantee there will be new things for everyone. This won't only be a slide fest, there will be many demos and (hopefully) enough time for questions.

Peter RaganitschOracle ACE Director (FOEX GmbH)

14:25 QR Code Plug-in - a Story of an APEX Plug-in Lifecycle

In this session I would like to share experiences and thoughts I've encountered during my first dive into the APEX plug-in world. The story covers a whole APEX plug-in lifecycle - from getting an idea about creating a plug-in, learning about APEX plug-ins, plug-in development and usage in applications, to worldwide publishing of plug-in. Presentation will be supported with practical example - a QR Code APEX plug-in.

Zoran Tica (ZT-TECH)

15:20 Building Single Page Applications in APEX

In this session we will walk through what single applications are, how they behave, and what the benefits are over traditional page submit web applications that are built using APEX. The primary focus is on the end user experience and their productivity i.e. users that need to enter and access information as fast as possible. We will talk about Javascript framework choices that provide this single page design pattern such as Oracle JET, React JS, and Sencha Ext JS. We will then jump into a number of design concepts on how to integrate a framework using the plugin interface and how we have used these concepts within our product the FOEX Plugin Framework. We will then jump into a number of live demo's comparing the speed and interaction difference between a standard APEX application and the equivalent using a single page application design. The overall point of the talk is to show people the customization capability of APEX and showing that it is possible to change the application design style using 3rd party frameworks and the APEX plugin interface. Highlighting the benefits are of doing this with APEX, as opposed to using a different development technology.

Matt Nolan (FOEX GmbH)

15:20 Web Source Modules - The Definitive Guide

Web Source Modules (WSM) is one of the biggest features that was introduced in APEX 18.x. It allows developers to declaratively connect to RESTful APIs. This allows developers to focus on making use of RESTful services rather than all the additional overhead (authentication, etc). This presentation will guide attendees through WSM basics, authentication, and work our way up to mode complicated situations. By the end of the presentation we will have built an entire APEX application using only 3rd party data sources (i.e. REST data sources). Attendees should be able to leverage the examples shown throughout the presentation to immediately augment their applications. Note: If APEX 19.x comes out before this presentation will also cover the proposed declarative WSM form and processes.

Martin d'SouzaOracle ACE Director (Insum)

15:20 After the social login feature of APEX do additional REST calls to Google / Facebook API’s

Social Login has never been easier. But after we’ve authenticated our user through Google or Facebook, we might want to do extra calls to Google. Have a look in the Google Agenda or Facebook Posts. This presentation will give insight in how to do that. Use the Social Login capabilities that APEX provides out of the box and do follow-up calls to the REST interface on Google and Facebook.

Richard MartensOracle ACE (Smart4solutions BV)
Coffe Break

16:05 Coffee Break

Relax with a good coffee and get some energy for the next sessions.

Coffee Break
Agenda

16:30 Plugins we use - advanced and reusable components

Thanks to APEX architecture we - the developers - can create advanced and reusable components called plugins. Ingenuity and creativity of developers results in many free and handy plugins that save time, enhance application, and show that APEX is not just a collection of basic charts and reports. During this presentation I will talk about my and APEX community plugins that I use in big commercial projects. I will show how you can extend your application with features that final user demands and features that accelerate development process.

Bartosz Ostrowski (Pretius)

16:30 REST Services without APEX - but with APEX_EXEC

When it's about accessing an external REST service from within PL/SQL, developers know their tools: UTL_HTTP, some SQL/JSON functions - and let's start coding. However, there is a much more easy way with the APEX_EXEC package. When a Web Source Module has been created, it can be used even outside the context of an APEX application. Using APEX_EXEC, the developer just deals with data sources, rows and columns - no JSON parsing, no low-level HTTP communication. The session will show how APEX_EXEC can be used - as a bonus attendees will learn how to create a table function in order to access a REST service as it was a table!

Carsten Czarski (ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co KG)

16:30 APEX Bad Practices

We all make mistakes. Making mistakes is an opportunity to learn. But as a first step you have to recognize the mistakes you made. If you don't, those mistakes might evolve into a practice. A bad practice. But you can also learn from someone else's mistakes. That's why I crowdsourced "Bad Practices" that people have encountered in the wild. And I was suprised by the numerous examples people came up with. So this session will cover real world examples of practices that are labeled as "bad". Of course we will discuss why these practices are bad and what would be the better solution.

Roel HartmanOracle ACE Director (APEX Consulting)
After Conference Drinks

18:25 Drinks !

A quick refreshment after a series of interesting sessions.

After Conference

19:30 Dinner and Party

Dinner and Party with all your old and new APEX Friends. Glad to have you !
Location: Johann Franck, Ban Jelačić Square 9, Zagreb, Croatia
Johann Franck is a lounge bar and a night club. Join us after the Conference and be entertained in rich nightlife program with DJ, delicious Croatian cuisine and drinks.

After Conference