Louis-Guillaume Carrier-Bédard
blog: lgcarrier
site: Apex Quebec

Edited by: Louis-Guillaume on Jul 15, 2009 2:28 PM

new version of apex-session-0.0.3.js

One of the highlights of ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 was Mike Hichwa's look at Application Express 4.0.

Download this presentation to get a first hand look at all the latest and greatest features being added to Oracle Application Express 4.0. Learn about Websheets, a brand new tool designed specifically for business users. There are many new features such as improved tabular forms, dynamic actions, better error handling, etc., together with numerous enhancements specifically to make development easier.

Click here to view the presentation or click here to download.

Use Oracle SQL Developer to aid Oracle Application Express development.

Oracle Application Express and Oracle SQL Developer are no-cost tools that both work with Oracle Database versions 9.2 and above. Not only can Oracle SQL Developer help you develop database applications but it also lets you browse, export, import, deploy, and remotely debug your Oracle Application Express applications.

This column introduces the ways Oracle SQL Developer and Oracle Application Express work together to aid your development efforts. We'll see how to browse Oracle Application Express information from within Oracle SQL Developer. Then we'll walk through an example of remotely debugging a browser-based application's PL/SQL code from Oracle SQL Developer.

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.

Explains features of Mailto web link, with examples

While more than a little be clunky the mailto link can still be useful sometimes. The problem with mailto is that it is necessary to spam harden the email address that is being used. Generally speaking there are better ways to get your customers to contact you (such as a form) but if simply nothing else will do here is a guide to using the mailto functionality. Many people don't realize that mailto can actually do a lot more than send an email to one person. It is possible to specify multiple recipients and set a subject and body content.

Note: I've had to break some of the examples onto multiple lines. Each should be on a single line. I have split them such that it should make a difference when they are used.

The simplest usage is:

Which opens a blank email to foo@example.com. If you want to include someone else in the mail it can be done like this:

To add a subject and body do this:

If you also wanted to cc in someone else to the above message you would do it like this (bcc is the same):

Finally if you want to include a multi-line body you need to escape new line characters with %0A (percent zero A) or  as shown here: