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• What Can A 'TreeDict' (Or Treemap) Be Used For In Practice?

  - by Seun Osewa

  I'm developing a 'TreeDict' class in Python. This is a basically a dict that allows you to retrieve its key-value pairs in sorted order, just like the Treemap collection class in Java. I've implemented some functionality based on the way unique indexes in relational databases can be used, e.g. functions to let you retrieve values corresponding to a range of keys, keys greater than, less than or equal to a particular value in sorted order, strings or tuples that have a specific prefix in sorted order, etc. Unfortunately, I can't think of any real life problem that will require a class like this. I suspect that the reason we don't have sorted dicts in Python is that in practice they aren't required often enough to be worth it, but I want to be proved wrong. Can you think of any specific applications of a 'TreeDict'? Any real life problem that would be best solved by this data structure? I just want to know for sure whether this is worth it.

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• Which Visual Studio 2010 edition for sole developer

  - by bufferz

  I am the sole .net developer for a small company. My projects span many .net technologies including WinForms, WPF, SQL, XNA, Linq, WCF, WTF?, and others. I struggle staying on top of all these projects so I'm looking to make my life easier with the release of VS2010. Without a mentor I rely heavily on StackOverflow and whatever else Google comes up with. Should I convince my company to get an edition with an MSDN subscription? Is it one of those things where once you have it, you can't imagine life without it? What about the source control that comes with VS2010, do you all find it better than an SVN server? We're looking to hire another programmer this year, would I be best off getting a Team edition of VS2010 to be best prepared for that hire? Thanks!

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• Is GOTO really as evil as we are led to believe?

  - by RoboShop

  I'm a young programmer, so all my working life I've been told GOTO is evil, don't use it, if you do, your first born son will die. Recently, I've realized that GOTO actually still exists in .NET and I was wondering, is GOTO really as bad as they say, or is it just because everyone says you shouldn't use it, so that's why you don't. I know GOTO can be used badly, but are there any legit situations where you may possibly use it. The only thing I can think of is maybe to use GOTO to break out of a bunch of nested loops. I reckon that might be better then having to "break" out of each of them but because GOTO is supposedly always bad, I would never use it and it would probably never pass a peer review. What are your views? Is GOTO always bad? Can it sometimes be good? Has anyone here actually been gutsy enough to use GOTO for a real life system?

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• Why helloworld example shows "SampleView" or "Net4j Examples" instead of "Hello World!"?

  - by outmind

  I've faced some problems which can make novices life harder. So want to share this finding.

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• Asp.net Page and control Events

  - by andrewWinn

  I have looked all over the web and I can not find the information I am looking for and I was hoping that someone could give me a hand. Specifically, I am looking for a comprehensive list of what events occur in the page and control life cycles and what is "available" in each event. Like when can I get a dropdownlists selected value, when can i databind, when can I get at values in view state and what not. Can anyone point me to a comprehensive list for both page and control life cycles? Or even provide that information for me? Thanks in advance.

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• An Attitude of Programming Gratitude

  - by DonnyD

  A few years ago, I felt privileged to be involved in a mature open-source project where my salary was paid by a government research grant. As it turned out, I was ill-equipped for this three-month contract which included some very stressful network support in a medical setting and, to add to that, the project was poorly managed with poor lines of communication. My dream job had suddenly become a nightmare. Never, in my experience, though, did I learn as much about programming in as short a period of time. Psychologically, the only way through this episode in my life was for me to actively look for the good in things and focus on my love of programming. What role has gratitude played in your life as a programmer?

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• Android Static Variable Scope and Lifetime

  - by Edison

  I have an application that has a Service uses a ArrayList to store in the background for a very long time, the variable is initialized when the service started. The service is in the background and there will be frequent access to the variable (that's why i don't want to use file management or settings since it will be very expensive for a file I/O for the sake of battery life). The variable will likely to be ~1MB-2MB over its life tie. Is it safe to say that it will never be nulled by GC or the system or is there any way to prevent it? Thanks.

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• How do you manage battery health of your development devices when is always plugged in?

  - by Pentium10

  I know this question is not programming related, so for this I made community wiki. Developers are the best guys to answer the question. I am addressed to those that do development on devices that runs on batteries, like phones, gadgets etc. Probably you are constantly develop for them, and therefor they are always plugged in and charged at 100%. We develop mainly for smartphones and we have devices that were always above 90% charged in the last month or so. If a battery is always charged, it degrades it life cycle, so what steps you do to ensure decent battery drain to maximize the life of the batteries.

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• Catching people up

  - by Randy Walker

  It’s been a while since I’ve blogged.  I suppose sometimes when one’s personal life gets busy, there are some things that fall by the wayside.  So what all has happened since I last blogged? Business has been good with lots of lessons learned.  I had hoped I would have had an important announcement several months ago concerning the business I own, but that simply hasn’t materialized yet. Will keep everyone posted.  Ensuring your business has a good sales pipeline and stays ahead in the technology curve is extremely important. I eventually resigned my INETA Board of Directors position.  Never one to mince words, frankly I had several issues with how things are run at INETA.  Mostly centered around some ethical issues compounded by higher expectations and what I felt was a lack of support.  I had put my hat into the ring in order to help change things, but eventually I didn’t really see change a possibility, and so all things must come to an end. I have started writing up a new business plan for a new startup, details to be forthcoming.  It’s new name will be Linker CRM.  I have some aggressive game changing plans ahead for it.  Ping me if you’re interested in finding out more information and don’t mind signing a non-compete and confidentiality agreement. ;) My personal life, has been hectic.  A 4 year old will do that to you.  As well as being divorced and the headaches associated with that.  If you’ve been divorced, I feel your pain, if you haven’t been, I would never wish the emotional roller coaster ride on anyone.  Dating has been interesting.  It’s a lot different at age 35 than your early 20s and relationships are far more complicated. Ethan is an absolutely fantastic adorable charmer of a kid.  He’s definitely going to be a heartbreaker.  His personality is really shining through and he’s taken onto my appreciation of music (and yes I’ll admit dance too).  We watched America’s Best Dance Crew (ABDC) together for the first time, he really loved it and I think he’ll probably start his own break dancing crew eventually.  I’ve posted a few videos on Facebook for those interested.  I’m extremely proud of him, but please say a little prayer for us as we try and continue to curb some behavior issues, as well as his mother and I try to settle some differences. This year’s travel plans have already included Dallas, Seattle, and a trip to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics (a huge thanks to the Washington State Police for the nice souvenir they gave me).  Future travel plans include a trip to Korea in the 2nd half of May, Nashville again in the summer, and hopefully New Orleans for the Microsoft TechEd 2010 Conference. Look for some new blog posts soon …

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• What is Python 20th and final guideline

  - by Eric

  Sometimes when my life needs some guiding light, I read the Zen of Python by Tim Peters and usually manage to get back on the tracks. Today was one of those days, so I checked it again. I've noticed that the "abstract" section says: Long time Pythoneer Tim Peters succinctly channels the BDFL's guiding principles for Python's design into 20 aphorisms, only 19 of which have been written down. What would be this last unwritten aphorism?

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• SQLAuthority Book Review – Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting

  - by pinaldave

  Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting by Christian Bolton, Justin Langford, Brent Ozar, James Rowland-Jones, Steven Wort Link to Amazon (Worldwide) Link to Flipkart (India) Brief Review: Having a book on internal and associating that with real life is “almost” an impossible task. The reason for using the word “almost” is because this book has accomplished this [...]

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• Software Architecture: Quality Attributes

  Quality is what all software engineers should strive for when building a new system or adding new functionality. Dictonary.com ambiguously defines quality as a grade of excellence. Unfortunately, quality must be defined within the context of a situation in that each engineer must extract quality attributes from a project’s requirements. Because quality is defined by project requirements the meaning of quality is constantly changing base on the project. Software architecture factors that indicate the relevance and effectiveness The relevance and effectiveness of architecture can vary based on the context in which it was conceived and the quality attributes that are required to meet. Typically when evaluating architecture for a specific system regarding relevance and effectiveness the following questions should be asked.   Architectural relevance and effectiveness questions: Does the architectural concept meet the needs of the system for which it was designed? Out of the competing architectures for a system, which one is the most suitable? If we look at the first question regarding meeting the needs of a system for which it was designed. A system that answers yes to this question must meet all of its quality goals. This means that it consistently meets or exceeds performance goals for the system. In addition, the system meets all the other required system attributers based on the systems requirements. The suitability of a system is based on several factors. In order for a project to be suitable the necessary resources must be available to complete the task. Standard Project Resources: Money Trained Staff Time Life cycle factors that affect the system and design The development life cycle used on a project can drastically affect how a system’s architecture is created as well as influence its design. In the case of using the software development life cycle (SDLC) each phase must be completed before the next can begin.  This waterfall approach does not allow for changes in a system’s architecture after that phase is completed. This can lead to major system issues when the architecture for the system is not as optimal because of missed quality attributes. This can occur when a project has poor requirements and makes misguided architectural decisions to name a few examples. Once the architectural phase is complete the concepts established in this phase must move on to the design phase that is bound to use the concepts and guidelines defined in the previous phase regardless of any missing quality attributes needed for the project. If any issues arise during this phase regarding the selected architectural concepts they cannot be corrected during the current project. This directly has an effect on the design of a system because the proper qualities required for the project where not used when the architectural concepts were approved. When this is identified nothing can be done to fix the architectural issues and system design must use the existing architectural concepts regardless of its missing quality properties because the architectural concepts for the project cannot be altered. The decisions made in the design phase then preceded to fall down to the implementation phase where the actual system is coded based on the approved architectural concepts established in the architecture phase regardless of its architectural quality. Conversely projects using more of an iterative or agile methodology to implement a system has more flexibility to correct architectural decisions based on missing quality attributes. This is due to each phase of the SDLC is executed more than once so any issues identified in architecture of a system can be corrected in the next architectural phase. Subsequently the corresponding changes will then be adjusted in the following design phase so that when the project is completed the optimal architectural and design decision are applied to the solution. Architecture factors that indicate functional suitability Systems that have function shortcomings do not have the proper functionality based on the project’s driving quality attributes. What this means in English is that the system does not live up to what is required of it by the stakeholders as identified by the missing quality attributes and requirements. One way to prevent functional shortcomings is to test the project’s architecture, design, and implementation against the project’s driving quality attributes to ensure that none of the attributes were missed in any of the phases. Another way to ensure a system has functional suitability is to certify that all its requirements are fully articulated so that there is no chance for misconceptions or misinterpretations by all stakeholders. This will help prevent any issues regarding interpreting the system requirements during the initial architectural concept phase, design phase and implementation phase. Consider the applicability of other architectural models When considering an architectural model for a project is also important to consider other alternative architectural models to ensure that the model that is selected will meet the systems required functionality and high quality attributes. Recently I can remember talking about a project that I was working on and a coworker suggested a different architectural approach that I had never considered. This new model will allow for the same functionally that is offered by the existing model but will allow for a higher quality project because it fulfills more quality attributes. It is always important to seek alternatives prior to committing to an architectural model. Factors used to identify high-risk components A high risk component can be defined as a component that fulfills 2 or more quality attributes for a system. An example of this can be seen in a web application that utilizes a remote database. One high-risk component in this system is the TCIP component because it allows for HTTP connections to handle by a web server and as well as allows for the server to also connect to a remote database server so that it can import data into the system. This component allows for the assurance of data quality attribute and the accessibility quality attribute because the system is available on the network. If for some reason the TCIP component was to fail the web application would fail on two quality attributes accessibility and data assurance in that the web site is not accessible and data cannot be update as needed. Summary As stated previously, quality is what all software engineers should strive for when building a new system or adding new functionality. The quality of a system can be directly determined by how closely it is implemented when compared to its desired quality attributes. One way to insure a higher quality system is to enforce that all project requirements are fully articulated so that no assumptions or misunderstandings can be made by any of the stakeholders. By doing this a system has a better chance of becoming a high quality system based on its quality attributes

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• First look at the cloud with Google App Engine and Udacity

  - by Ken Hortsch

  Udacity is free online university and offers a CS253 intro to web development class.  Since I am currently a web developer/architect in ASP.Net (and recent project has brought me back to Java) it is a bit light.  However, it does offer me a nice problem set and my first exposure to writing cloud apps with GAE and Google Datastore. Steve Huffman, who developed reddit, is the instructor and does offer nice real-life stories.  Give it a look.

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• 1 Million IOPS

  - by GrumpyOldDBA

  As a keen follower of storage performance I couldn't help but be drawn to this article in The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/14/lsi_million_iops/ this morning. I gave my 5 year old laptop a new lease of life with a SSD and in combination with the old drive made external managed to reduce the time of a demo query from 50 odd mins down to 6 mins. I also have 4 Silicon Power 32GB SSDs set up as a raid 0 on my home server, an overblown PC. http://www.futurestorage.co.uk/index.asp?selmanuf...(read more)

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• SQLAuthority Book Review Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting

  Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting by Christian Bolton, Justin Langford, Brent Ozar, James Rowland-Jones, Steven WortLink to Amazon (Worldwide)Link to Flipkart (India)Brief Review: Having a book on internal and associating that with real life is almost an impossible task. The reason for using the word almost is because this book has accomplished this [...]...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Check Your LIC Policy Status Through SMS

  - by Suganya

  Most of us in India hold at least one Life Insurance Policy today. While we all know everything gets computerized these days, LIC also supports payment via internet. You can view details about how payment is made through internet here. Few years back LIC started supporting SMS’es as well. Now you really don’t need to have internet rather check your LIC policy status while on road by sending just one SMS to 56677. Now that we know LIC answers to our SMS, lets see the format in which we have to send our SMS and their meaning. The format in which the SMS has to be sent is ASKLIC <Policy No> [PREMIUM/REVIVAL/BONUS/LOAN/NOM] Send any one of the following [PREMIUM/REVIVAL/BONUS/LOAN/NOM] to get the details. For instance, If you send ASKLIC <Policy No> Premium , it would return your Installment premium under policy ASKLIC <Policy No> Revival , it would check If policy is lapsed and return revival amount payable ASKLIC <Policy No> Bonus , it would check and return the amount of Bonus invested ASKLIC <Policy No> Loan , it would check and return the amount available as Loan ASKLIC <Policy No> NOM , it would check and return the details of Nomination Also, as everyone knows there are lots of pension schemes as well available in LIC and if one is interested in getting the pension details, then the format for sending the SMS is LICPension <Policy No> [STAT /ECDUE/ANNPD/PDTHRU/AMOUNT/CHQRET] For instance, If you send LICPension <Policy No> STAT gives you the IPP Policy status details LICPension <Policy No> ECDUE gives you the existence certificate due details LICPension <Policy No> ANNPD gives you the last annuity released date LICPension <Policy No> CHQ/ECS/NEFT (PDTHRU) gives the details about annuity payment through LICPension <Policy No> AMOUNT gives details about annuity amount LICPension <Policy No> CHQRET gives details about cheque return information Just with one SMS get all your policy details and make life easier. Each SMS that you send would be charged depending on your service provider. This article titled,Check Your LIC Policy Status Through SMS, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Oracle's Australian Graduate Recruitment Program

  - by david.talamelli

  I have been with Oracle for 5 years now and one thing that I have found that there is never a shortage of here is - Variety. Over the last 5 years I have had the opportunity to work on projects across various countries, across various technologies and skill-sets and also across various level of seniority. No two days are the same. One of the projects I was fortunate to be involved in occurred last year and it is one of the ones that is closest to me. Last year I was able to take responsibility for our 2011 Graduate Recruitment drive in Australia. Two weeks ago I went to Sydney to meet our Graduates who started in February 2011 with us and it was great to see them come to the end (or beginning actually) of our journey together. I am excited at the potential of what our Graduates careers will develop into here with us. I remember at our interviewing last year trying to explain life in Oracle, it is great to see those same Graduates with us now learning and developing life and business skills that I hope they will take with them in their professional careers. I was talking to one of my colleagues this week who mentioned the excitement and energy that our new Graduates bring is infectious, and I agree it really is. Our Graduates have a big learning curve ahead of them and they are about to start going on rotations into some of our Business Groups - but I think it is a great experience to see how a global company operates and pulls together to achieve results together. Here is a picture we took the other week of this year's Oracle Graduates (if any of our Graduates are reading this blog - it was great seeing you in NSW and I do wish you all the success here at Oracle) Once again Oracle's Graduate Program will be running in 2011 in Australia (Graduates will start in Jan/Feb 2012). The Oracle Australia Graduate Development Program is a one-year program consisting of orientation, formal training, project rotations in one core line of business and finally job placement. The formal training is a combination of structured development programs on soft skills and functional competencies via various delivery formats. Graduates are also expected to work in a team environment and complete multiple projects addressing real business challenges and at the time gaining a broad business understanding. For our Australia program we are hiring in our North Ryde and Melbourne offices. Resume submissions are being accepted now. First Round interviews will take place in June 2011 with Final Round interviews in July 2011. The Australia Graduate Program is open to Australian Residents and Citizens who are either in the final year of their studies or have graduated the previous year. For more details on Oracle and our Graduate Program visit our Campus website To express your interest, mail your resume to [email protected]

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• Emulation of windows sucks on Linux

  <b>Technology & Life Integration:</b> "Nevertheless there are a great many windows programs which run quite well, sometimes better, using the WINE developed libraries. Yet I sometimes wonder if it is too little too late."

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• How to Learn SEO From Michael Bolton

  Today I went to a live show given by Michael Bolton, in the new grandiose Guangzhou Opera House. His voice is still unique. And yet he was teaching me how to do a better SEO, which has been my job and life for over 7 years.

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• Code Trivia #5

  - by João Angelo

  A quick one inspired by real life broken code. What’s wrong in this piece of code? class Planet { public Planet() { this.Initialize(); } public Planet(string name) : this() { this.Name = name; } private string name = "Unspecified"; public string Name { get { return name; } set { name = value; } } private void Initialize() { Console.Write("Planet {0} initialized.", this.Name); } }

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• Starting this week: Dublin, Maidenhead, and London

  - by KKline

  This might be most most overcommitted four-week period of time ever in my life. I’m tired just thinking about it! Not only am I traveling internationally and speaking over the next few weeks, I’m also helping on two book projects, learning some new applications from Quest Software, and helping on a small Transact-SQL refactoring project. Swag on hand? I’ve got a special printing of 500 video training DVDs for this trip: SQL Server Training on DMVs Performance Monitor and Wait Events Plus, I’ll have...(read more)

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• O&rsquo;Reilly Deal of the Day 10/June/2014 - AngularJS Directives

  - by TATWORTH

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2014/06/10/orsquoreilly-deal-of-the-day-10june2014---angularjs-directives.aspxToday’s half-price E-Book offer from O’Reilly at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781783280339.do is AngularJS Directives. “AngularJS, propelled by Google, is quickly becoming one of the most popular JavaScript MVC frameworks available, working to invert the development paradigm and bring data-driven modularity to the web frontend. Directives serve as the core building blocks in AngularJS and enable you to create reusable models that mold around your data structures and breathe new life into the intersection of HTML and JavaScript.”

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• Changing Focus on my Blog

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I try to limit these types of blog posts – the ones where I communicate some change as if I have a loyal subscriber base that will be somehow affected. Still, I think its of worth if for nothing else than to document for myself an acknowledgement that my career is evolving. For the last who knows how long, I’ve had this as my banner: It’s funny how technology focuses change over time. 3.5 – 4 years ago I was wanting to immerse myself in BizTalk. Then I shifted, focussing on Silverlight. I even started a short-lived Silverlight user group here in Winnipeg that had, IMO, one of the *best* UG logos ever (do a Google search for the old school Winnipeg Jets logo if you don’t catch the reference)… And even how I identified myself – as a Developer – isn’t really accurate anymore as I’ve shifted more into an architect/analyst role at Online Business Systems as well as getting much more involved in business development. So I’m switching the focus of this blog a bit. Nothing too great, but you’ll find my posts aren’t necessarily tied to a technology or platform. Instead I’ll be focussing on current passions and interests. Solution Architecture Before a line of code is written, a solution is envisioned. The process of performing solution analysis and architecture is an intriguing process that encompasses negotiation and interpersonal skills as much as technical knowledge. Business & Entrepreneurship Creating things, building things, and working with others – business is fascinating and exciting! Entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship, are growing trends that I’ve been exploring over the last few years through my conference (www.prairiedevcon.com) and within Online. Microsoft At Online one of my roles is “Microsoft Practice Lead” and my entire career has been built around the Microsoft stack of technologies. That focus won’t change here on my blog, and there’s tonnes of exciting new products and technologies coming out of Redmond. Adoption This is a very personal subject that’s extremely close to my heart. I’m not talking about technology adoption, I’m talking about human adoption. Almost three years ago we adopted our first daughter, Sadie, and two years ago we adopted our second daughter, Skylar; an amazing new chapter in my life as I became a “parent”. Adoption is very much misunderstood, and many people have questions about it. Hopefully I can shed some light into our experiences and provide some guidance for those that are looking into it. So come along with me as I start chronicling the next phase of my career and life.

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• Sony Vaio VPCS111FM

  I recently got Sony Vaio VPCS111FM/S and I have to say, this is the best laptop I have ever hand in my life. I highly recommend it. Read more...

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• The APEX of Business Value...or...the Business Value of APEX? Oracle Cloud Takes Oracle APEX to New Heights!

  - by Gene Eun

  The attraction of Oracle Application Express (APEX) has increased tremendously with the recent launch of the Oracle Cloud. APEX already supported departmental development and deployment of business applications with minimal involvement from the IT department. Positioned as the ideal replacement for MS Access, APEX probably has managed better to capture the eye of developers and was used for enterprise application development at least as much as for the kind of tactical applications that Oracle strategically positioned it for. With APEX as PaaS from the Oracle Cloud, a leap is made to a much higher level of business value. Now the IT department is not even needed to make infrastructure available with a database running  on it. All the business needs is a credit card. And the business application that is developed, managed and used from the cloud through a standard browser can now just as easily be accessed by users from around the world as by users from the business department itself. As a bonus – the development of the APEX application is also done in the cloud – with no special demands on the location or the enterprise access privileges of the developers. To sum it up: APEX from Oracle Cloud Database Service get the development environment up and running in minutes no involvement from the internal IT department required (not for infrastructure, platform, or development) superior availability and scalability is offered by Oracle users from anywhere in the world can be invited to access the application developers from anywhere in the world can participate in creating and maintaining the application In addition: because the Oracle Cloud platform is the same as the on-premise platform, you can still decide to move the APEX application between the cloud and the local environment – and back again. The REST-ful services that are available through APEX allow programmatic interaction with the database under the APEX application. That means that this database can be synchronized with on premise databases or data stores in (other) clouds. Through the Oracle Cloud Messaging Service, the APEX application can easily enter into asynchronous conversations with other APEX applications, Fusion Middleware applications (ADF, SOA, BPM) and any other type of REST-enabled application. In my opinion, now, for the first time perhaps, APEX offers the attraction to the business that has been suggested before: because of the cloud, all the business needs is  a credit card (a budget of $175 per month), an internet-connection and a browser. Not like before, with a PC hidden under a desk or a database running somewhere in the data center. No matter how unattended: equipment is needed, power is consumed, the database needs to be kept running and if Oracle Database XE does not suffice, software licenses are required as well. And this set up always has a security challenge associated with it. The cloud fee for the Oracle Cloud Database Service includes infrastructure, power, licenses, availability, platform upgrades, a collection of reusable application components and the development and runtime environments containing the APEX platform. Of course this not only means that business departments can move quickly without having to convince their IT colleagues to move along – it also means that small organizations that do not even have IT colleagues can do the same. Getting tailored applications or applications up and running to get in touch with users and customers all over the world is now within easy reach for small outfits – without any investment. My misunderstanding For a long time, I was under the impression that the essence of APEX was that the business could create applications themselves – meaning that business ‘people’ would actually go into APEX to create the application. To me APEX was too much of a developers’ tool to see that happen – apart from the odd business analyst who missed his or her calling as an IT developer. Having looked at various other cloud based development offerings – including Force.com, Mendix, WaveMaker, WorkXpress, OrangeScape, Caspio and Cordys- I have come to realize my mistake. All these platforms are positioned for 'the business' but require a fair amount of coding and technical expertise. However, they make the business happy nevertheless, because they allow the  business to completely circumvent the IT department. That is the essence. Not having to go through the red tape, not having to wait for IT staff who (justifiably) need weeks or months to provide an environment, not having to deal with administrators (again, justifiably) refusing to take on that 'strange environment'. Being able to think of an initiative and turn into action right away. The business does not have to build the application - it can easily hire some external developers or even that nerdy boy next door. They can get started, get an application up and running and invite users in – especially external users such as customers. They will worry later about upgrades and life cycle management and integration. To get applications up and running quickly and start turning ideas into action and results rightaway. That is the key selling point for all these cloud offerings, including APEX from the Cloud. And it is a compelling story. For APEX probably even more so than for the others. While I consider APEX a somewhat proprietary framework compared with ‘regular’ Java/JEE web development (or even .NET and PHP  development), it is still far more open than most cloud environments. APEX is SQL and PL/SQL based – nothing special about those languages – and can run just as easily on site as in the cloud. It has been around since 2004 (that is not including several predecessors that fed straight into APEX) so it can be considered pretty mature. Oracle as a company seems pretty stable – so investments in its technology are bound to last for some time to come. By the way: neither APEX nor the other Cloud DevaaS offerings are targeted at creating applications with enormous life times. They fit into a trend of agile development and rapid life cycle management, with fairly light weight user interfaces that quickly adapt to taste, technology trends and functional requirements and that are easily replaced. APEX and ADF – a match made in heaven?! (or at least in the sky) Note that using APEX only for cloud based database with REST-ful Services is also a perfectly viable scenario: any UI – mobile or browser based – capable of consuming REST-ful services can be created against such a business tier. Creating an ADF Mobile application for example that runs aginst REST-ful services is a best practice for mobile development. Such REST-ful services can be consumed from any service provider – including the Cloud based APEX powered REST-ful services running against the Oracle Cloud Database Service! The ADF Mobile architecture overview can easily be morphed to fit the APEX services in – allowing for a cloud based mobile app: Want to learn more about Oracle Database Cloud Service or Oracle Cloud, just visit cloud.oracle.com  or oracle.com/cloud. Repost of a blog entry by Rick Greenwald, Director of Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud Service.

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