Oracle OpenWorld - done and dusted

Oracle OpenWorld is over for another year, and it's time to review the key messages for Oracle Apex.

This was my first visit to OpenWorld, my previous experiences limited to downloading presentations.

So was it worth flying all the way from Australia to see it in person?
Absolutely - you get so much more from hearing and talking directly to the presenters.

Standouts for me: Tom Kyte's presentation on database schema design.
I'd downloaded much of the content of his presentation from other events, but had missed the power of the message. Hearing and seeing the demo really opened my eyes - I'll be reviewing my database design when I get back to work.
Tom will be presenting at the AUSOUG conference in October, so delegates to the Australian event are in for a treat.
 
Carl Backstrom's presentation on Web 2.0 functionality coming in Oracle Apex.
It was great to hear the enthusiasm about the upcoming functionality from Carl. If your not already starting to incorporate AJAX functionality into your applications, it's definitely time to get your head in that space.

I caught up with Carl on the Demo grounds, to see the Web-Sheets functionality, which takes interactive reports to a whole new level. It allows interactive AJAX based editing directly in the report, as well as allowing end users to define and share sheets.

Carl was also very excited that the Oracle legal team have given him the go-ahead to use jQuery in Apex. It means he can focus on higher level AJAX functionality, rather than getting down and dirty with the DOM. Apex 4.0 is very focused on delivering declarative functionality to developers, so they don't have to know AJAX.

And finally, meeting and networking with Apex users. With 33 presentations related to Apex, the enthusiasm for Apex can't be underestimated. Time after time, presenters shared their success stories on Apex, on how quick the development time was, how short the learning curve was, and the value add it gave to their organisations.