I had to try it out and see what’s new.

What i have found is 2 places where you can choose between desktop and mobile browser and one place where you can enter mobile defaults.

Edit Theme now has a section to enter the template defaults for mobile.

Edit Page Template let’s you choose between desktop and mobile browser.

Create Page Wizard lets you choose if you want to create a page for desktop or for mobile browser.

All these settings don’t have a functional impact on your application. I just helps you to choose the right options.

With Oracle APEX 4.2, when mobile support is fully enabled, i expect to see more things like this as well as an impact on functionality. For example loading the jQuery mobile libraries or switching between Flash- and HTML5-Charts.

With ApexLib 2.2 we release a maintenance Version for all those who built APEX Applications with previous versions and want to upgrade to APEX 4.1, without the need of any code changes.

All Applications which worked under APEX 3.x or 4.0 should now work equally under Oracle APEX 4.1 .

But…

There are some small caveats. You cannot mix APEX Errorhandling and ApexLib Errorhandling, especially when using Tabular Forms. Either use only ApexLib Checks for your TabForm, or use only APEX TabForm-Validations. Then everything is fine.

Watch out for my following blogpost about the future of APEX and the ApexLib Framework.

Download Version 2.2. Upgrade from 2.1 is really simple, just re-install the DB-Part.

If he gets voted onto the ODTUG Board of Directors he’ll take care that APEX is further promoted with and thru ODTUG.

Read all about this on his Blog and – if you are a full member of ODTUG – vote for him.

“Wir sind APEX” (a cooperation my company click-click IT Solutions is part of) adds its share to the Community and provides some informational Events and some Workshops in the near future.
See a full listing here.

The widely most interesting Event will be held on October 14 2011 in Vienna. Topic and Title of this Event is “Oracle APEX and the Cloud“. Next to myself there will be Patrick Wolf, Christian Neumüller and Carsten Czarski talking about Oracle APEX and how it can be used within public or private clouds (e.g. provide APEX hosting within your company for your colleagues).

There will be also a guest speaker from a big company presenting about how APEX is currently used in his company.

So if you are somewhere in or around Austria and you do understand german (as this event will be held in german language) you should definitely come. Bookings required !

With this post i give you a listing of links to all ressources mentioned in the webinar, as well as some F.A.Q. regarding mobile on APEX.

There will also be information on a 1-day training on mobile Applications with Oracle APEX, given by me in Oct 2011.

At first a listing of the ressources:

• You can download the slides i used during the webinar
• jQuery mobile -> there you’ll find links to the Documenation, Forum, Blog
• jQuery mobile Device Support Matrix
• Gallery of mobile Webistes built with jQuery mobile
• APEX Statement of Direction
• Blog Post Series “mobile APEX”
• HTML5 Item Type Plugins at www.apex-plugin.com
• Google Visualization Region Type Plugin from Roel Hartman

The most common Questions and their answers:

• Q: Is your mobile Theme available for download?
• A: How I built the mobile Theme is described in a series of Blogposts
• Q: Do I have to develop seperate Pages or Applications for mobile and Standard or does jQuery mobile automatically render my desktop version mobile-friendly?
• A: Mobile Websites and Desktop Websites have one big difference: the screen size. So you will want to make sure, that the little screen you have is used as good as possible. Show only the necessary informations and reduced menues will be beneficiary for the mobile experience. That means: develop one Desktop Application with all the functionality you need, and a separate Application for mobile devices with only the necessary functions on it. Your users will appreciate that.
• Q: Is jQuery mobile limited to iPhones or Android Phones?
• A: Not at all. jQuery mobile tries to cover all mobile devices like phones or tablets. Depending on the device features jQuery mobile tries to make your page as nice and good working as possible. See the Device Support Matrix for Details.
• Q: Do you need extra Skills in HTML or CSS or Javascript to create a mobile APEX Application?
• A: Once you have the mobile theme you only need standard APEX skills to create a mobile Application.

If you are eager to start developing mobile Applications but don’t know how to do that you can attend my 1-Day Training Class for Developing mobile Application with Oracle APEX.
This Training is scheduled to take place on Oct 04th 2011 in Vienna, Austria. If there is enough demand for an extra english-speaking Training class i would schedule an english Training the day before or so.

Please email me at apex [at] click-click.at or comment on this blog post if you are interested in attending an english speaking training class for developing mobile Application with Oracle APEX.

Yesterday started Kscope 2011 with some very interesting presentations and a load of Twitter messages following that.On the one Hand it’s for sure that Oracle APEX will integrate jQuery mobile in the future, on the other Hand nobody knows (or tells) when this will happen. Most probably not for the upcoming Version 4.1 of Application Express, but maybe it comes with 4.1.1 or 4.2 or…

The good thing is: it doesn’t matter.

If you want to create mobile Web Application with Oracle APEX you can do so already, in almost any available Version of APEX (i tried it in 3.2 and 4.0, both work very well).
Just read my postings on APEX on your smartphone, you’ll see it’s no magic at all.

But,…

But Oracle APEX 4.1 (and/or the following versions) will bring some fundamental enhancements in the APEX engine that makes it even easier to create a mobile Application.
That is  dynamic lists (based on a SQL Statement), Templates without a HTML-Table around Page-Items and Labels (very important!) and much more.

And, of course, Oracle will bring a full fledged mobile Theme for APEX which will include many templates for your Reports, Lists, Forms, Items, Buttons and all to look and work good on a mobile phone.

No need to wait

Still there is no need to wait. If you need/want a mobile APEX Application now you can alreay build it. Your code will work in future versions, so there is nothing lost.

And now: go on and write a mobile Application. Mobile is the future !

If you want help doing that, just contact me.

You want to join the crowd and provide a mobile interface for your APEX Application? Nothing easier than that!

As pointed out above the variety of mobile phone brands and Operation Systems is wide and our APEX Application should run on any device, regardless if there is a fruit on the back cover or something else (a robot?).

Oracle APEX lets you create a web application and you can influence the HTML Code it creates. That also means you can include a 3rd Party Javascript Library to provide support for mobile devices.

There are several Javascript libraries/frameworks covering mobile support, like: jqTouch, Sencha Touch, jQuery mobile, dhtmlx touch and many more.

After several tests i decided to use jQuery mobile, as it fits the APEX structure best, covers the broadest range of mobile devices and will also be included in APEX 4.1 (or 4.2, whenever they are ready for mobile). See the Statement of direction for more Information.

See what it looks like:

Here you can see it in a demo Showcase: http://www.click-apex.at/apex/f?p=mobile

The good thing is, everything you see is built using standard APEX components. There is at first a Theme with a small number of Templates to create a HTML Structure that jQuery mobile expects. Then there are a couple of Plugins to render HTML5 compliant input items (the type-attribut of the input item makes the mobile browser decide which onscreen keyboard should be used: number, test, phone, email, url).
In the pictures above you can see a standard login screen, a List for the main menu, a report with a special template and a standard form using the HTML5 Plugin for the phone keyboard.

There will be a very detailed article in one of the next issues of the german APEX Community where i describe how this demo Application was built (and provide the Theme source code).
Once this is released i will provide you here with an english version of that.

If you like this and you want to create a mobile APEX Application too, then you have 3 options:

1. create a mobile Theme on your own (that takes some time at the first try…)
2. wait for APEX 4.1 where support for mobile will hopefully be included (this might take a while)
3. wait for my next Blog Posting on this topic (best choice!)

Update: the next Blog Posting was released

See the posts of Joel Kallman and David Peake.

On http://tryapexnow.com/ you can Sign up for a Workspace test drive the new Release.

All new Features are described on http://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=52663 .

The most important improvements:

• real Error handling
• better support for Validitions and Processes for Tabular Forms
• choice to use ROWID for Tabellen with large natural Primary Key
• Plugins for AuthenticationAuthorization Schemes

Go test it and give feedback to the APEX Team. The more Feedback they get, the quicker they can bugfix and release the RC 4.1

Patrick: thanks for the Errorhandling, waited a long time for it :-)

On OTN you can download either a Windows Installer or a Linux Installer (no mac version there).

In short the limitations of XE 11g:

• only one CPU is used
• only one installation of XE per Computer
• up to 11 gigabyte of user-data is allowed ! (XE10 had only 4GB)
• only 1 GB RAM is used (at most)
• no HTTPS with the built in EPG

I decided to use one of my idle Windows XP PCs and started with reading the installation guide.

The only thing i had to enter during the installation was a password for my SYS and SYSTEM DB Users, the rest went with the defaults.

Just a couple minutes later XE 11g was up and running :-)

The first thing i did was allowing remote access to the new and shiny graphical admin interface. Simply enter this command “EXEC DBMS_XDB.SETLISTENERLOCALACCESS(FALSE);” when connected to SQLPLUS as SYS or SYSTEM.

With the URL http://<hostname>:8080/apex/f?p=4950 you can start the graphical admin interface of your XE 11g database.

See the pictures, it looks really great!

And to make it even better, this is the latest and hottest release of APEX you can get!

What do you wait for? Go get it.

If you encounter any problems installing or using this beta version of Oracle XE 11g please report in the XE 11g Beta Forum.

Meine Firma, click-click IT Solutions, veranstaltet zwei Seminare zu Oracle APEX Anfang März in Wien.

Diese Seminare laufen in der Reihe der AOUG Seminare und sind deswegen unfassbar günstig!
Für Mitglieder der AOUG kostet so ein Tag gerade mal EUR 225,- , Nichtmitglieder auch nur EUR 295,- !

Seminar 1: 03.03.2011 APEX Einstieg

Der richtige Einstieg für alle Interessierten, hier bekommen sie einen ganzen Tag lang alles wissenswerte rund um Oracle Application Express vermittelt und “begreifen” Applikationsentwicklung mit gezielten Hands-On Übungen.

Egal ob Entwickler, DBA oder Manager. Nach diesem Tag können sie nicht nur ihre eigene Applikationsentwicklung starten, sondern sie haben auch genug Background um zu entscheiden ob/wie/wo Oracle APEX in ihrem Unternehmen eingesetzt werden kann.

Seminar 2: 04.03.2011 APEX 4.0 new Features

Wer schon Ahnung von Oracle APEX hat, aber die neuen Features der Release 4.0 noch nicht einsetzt, der ist mit diesem Tag richtig beraten.

An diesem Tag dreht sich alles um Interaktivität mit Dynamic Actions, Plugins und den neuen Tabular Form Features.
Aber auch die anderen neuen Features kommen nicht zu kurz:

• neue Charts und Maps
• interaktive Reports
• Team Development
• REST Webservices
• uvm.

Lassen sie sich diese einmalige Gelegenheit nicht entgehen und buchen noch heute einen der wenigen noch verfügbaren Plätze direkt auf der AOUG Seminar-Seite.