Query the view sources like you query your PL/SQL source

While developing I use the view user_source many times each day to search my PL/SQL code.
In this view the source code of stored PL/SQL and triggers are provided but unfortunately the source of views is missing. Furthermore the dictionary view containing the source very old and thus the source column is of type LONG. And you cannot query on a LONG column :-(.
I have found several solutions to this problem, ranging from creating a new table using TO_LOB to convert the LONG column to using the function dbms_metadata.get_ddl ('VIEW', view_name). I don't want to create another table each time, and the solution with dbms_metadata did not perform for me, so I wrote a solution using a pipelined function, exposing the same interface as user_source.
The skeleton for the pipelined function and the types needed was created by the Pipelined function generator I created a long time ago. It still works! I used the same column definitions as the user_source view. So I ended up with these types:

create  type view_source_rowtype 
 as object 
 ( name varchar2(30) 
 , type varchar2(12) 
 , line number 
 , text varchar2(4000) 
);
/

create  type view_source_table_type as table of view_source_rowtype;
/

In the pipelined function DBMS_SQL is used to query user_views and to extract the view name and the source. The LONG column is read in chunks and each chunk is divided into lines using the Apex function apex_util.string_to_table ( I love this function, it is soo useful!). The separate lines are returned to the TABLE function with PIPE ROW including line number. The source code of the function is too long for this blog post, but you can download all the code HERE.
A view is created for easy access to the function:

create  view view_source as 
   select * 
   from table(view_source_pf());

Now you can query this view:

SQL> select * from view_source where name = 'VIEW_SOURCE';

NAME                           TYPE               LINE TEXT                                                                                               
------------------------------ ------------ ---------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIEW_SOURCE                    VIEW                  1 select "NAME","TYPE","LINE","TEXT"                                                                  
VIEW_SOURCE                    VIEW                  2    from table(view_source_pf())                                

You can now even query your PL/SQL and view code in one pass, for example if you want to look for the text label:

select * from 
(
 select * from user_source
 union all
 select * from view_source
) 
where  lower(text) like '%label%';

Happy coding, Dick Dral

Apex World Dashboard

For the Apex Dashboard Competition I created an World Dashboard. It is based on the demographical and geographical data on all countries of the world. It was a lot of fun to build it and also fun to use it.

You can take a look at it using the URL shown below.

http://www.speech2form.com/ords/f?p=AWD

Using it you will discover amazing facts. The dashboard contains data on population, land use, energy use, health and transportation. You can find for example which are the countries with the most doctors or the highest percentage forest. Let yourself be surprised – at least I was. You can also see how your country compares to others in the areas afore mentioned.

In following post I will discuss some of the features I have built in like the Oracle JET Sunburst Chart or the comparison table.

Have fun!

BTW The application is available on Github if you want to examine the source code:

https://github.com/dickdral1/world_dashboard

If you want to run the application you have to install the sample data for the competition. You can find that here.

Identify Fire on Page Load DA Actions

Today I am investigating performance problems on an Oracle Apex page. On of the possible causes are JavaScript DA Actions that are Fired on page load. The following query helps to identify these DA Actions:

select distinct da.page_id
     , da.page_name
     , da.when_event_name
     , case when when_selection_type is not null then 
                    when_selection_type ||':' || when_element || when_region
            else null
       end    as  object_name
     , da.dynamic_action_name
from   apex_application_page_da_acts   act
       join apex_application_page_da   da  on ( da.dynamic_action_id = act.dynamic_action_id ) 
where  act.action_code = 'NATIVE_JAVASCRIPT_CODE'
  and  act.application_name = '[app_name]'
  and  act.page_id = [page_id]
  and  substr(act.execute_on_page_init,1,1) = 'Y'
;

Fill in the name of your application ([appname]) and the ID of the page ([page_id]) and run the query. You will get a list of the relevant DA Actions that you can check.

By the way, if you are at this point you could also run the query for the DA Fire on Page Load settings and contribute the survey. Happy Apexing, Dick Dral

Let’s wreck the default Fire on page load option

Do you recognize the situation that you have coded a nice JavaScript Dynamic Action to respond on user input, you run the page and you notice unwanted behaviour when loading the page?
Oh no, forgot to uncheck the Fire on page load option! It happens to me all the time!

In Oracle Apex JavaScript DA steps have the option Fire on page load checked by default, as you will all be aware. PL/SQL steps have it default unchecked.
I stumble regularly over forgetting to uncheck the option. Most of the DA’s I write are about responding on user actions so I normally do not want them to execute on page load. Not unchecking the option results in unwanted behaviour which is not always obvious. One time it has cost me a few hours to come to the conclusion I should uncheck it.

I would like to have the option default unchecked. This ranks high on my Apex enhancement requests list.

To back this I decided to examine how many Javascript DA steps still have the Fire on page load option active in the application I currently work on together with 5 other developers.
This is the result:

Execute on Page Load	Number
No	365
Yes	132

The ratio between unchecked and checked is 2,7! A good argument for me to have the option default unchecked.

What about the Apex builder? A query on the Apex repository for application ID’s between 4000 and 5000 results in :

Execute on Page Load	Number
No	86
Yes	36

Also in their own work it would be an advantage to uncheck by default!

But how about your application? I am curious what the ratio is in your application.
If you fire the query below you can find out.

select execute_on_page_init, count(*)
from   apex_application_page_da_acts
where  action_code = 'NATIVE_JAVASCRIPT_CODE'
  and  application_name = 'appname
group by execute_on_page_init;

You can fill in the application name at appname or omit this line to query the whole Apex repository.

Please you post the results on www.speech2form.com/da_survey. If your results also show a majority for the unchecked steps I will try to convince the Apex team of unchecking the option by default for JavaScript DA steps.

#letswreckthistogether ;-).

Happy apexing,
Dick Dral

Using the Apex Auto Complete Item with JQuery Mobile

For long lists mobile applications the Apex Autocomplete Item is way more suited than a Select List Item.

You know what I mean, when you ever needed to choose a country from a Select List ( > 200 items) and your pick was near the end ( The Netherlands, Unites States ). You have to scroll for 10 or 20 seconds to reach to the desired entry, and all the time you need to pay attention whether or not you have already the desired entry.

In this case it is much more user friendly to deploy the good old Auto Complete Item. Within a few key strokes, usually not more than three, the list of possibilities has been reduced to less than ten entries, and you can easily pick the right value. The only drawback for the programmer is, that the Auto Complete Item returns the description instead of the code, so the code need to be looked up before submitting the form. Not a big price for the gain is user friendliness.

The Auto Complete item is not directly available from the list of item types, you need to choose the option Show unsupported to uncover the item type. On the right side the after pressing Show unsupported is visible.

After including the item and attaching a source query to it, it is already functional:

Okay, we can choose a value, but it does not look right, does it? We cannot read the text of some entries, the pick list is transparent and the item have list style bullets.
To fix this we need to apply a bit of CSS:

.ac_results {
   background-color: white;
   border: 1px solid #cccccc;
}
.ac_results ul {
   margin-top: 0;
   padding-left: 5px;
}
.ac_results li {
   line-height: 30px;
   list-style: outside none none;
}

You can put it as Inline CSS on the page or in the template page, if you want to use it on several pages.
Now the item looks a lot better:

PS Do not use the Date Picker Classic,  also a not supported item type, with JQM. When you put such an item on a JQM page, calling the page provides you an eternal load animation, the page is never shown. 

 Happy apexing,

Change those icons in your Navigation Menu!

Just returned from the DOAG 2015 conference. I really had a good time meeting old friends, making new ones and seeing a lot of impressive and new things on Apex and Oracle.
One thing annoyed me however, and that were the icons in the Apex 5 Navigation Menu. Most of the applications had a menu looking like this, all options using the Folder icon:

While it is so easy to let the menu look like this:

By the way, does anyone know a more suitable fa icon for JSON?

In the Apex builder just navigate to Shared Components > Navigation Menu and select one of the options:

And choose a nice, explanatory icon for Image/Class. The Apex team even provided a list of values with the categorized font Awesome icons. Repeat this for all your menu entries, and you will have a much nicer menu at very little effort.

For the rest keep up the good work ;-).

Happy Apexing

Speak to your Apex application

The development of smartphone web applications hosts many challenges. For me personally the largest challenge is efficient and comfortable data input. Entering data through a small keyboard is a time consuming and unpleasant action for me. For this reason I have been designing and developing alternative ways to enter data. My latest investigations concern speech input. It started with the release of iOS8 that supported speech-to-text for a lot more languages than before. Among them was Dutch, my native language, and you know what? It does a great job!

Speech recognition on iPhone

Recognition is fast and accurate. I am able to ‘speak’ a text message or email without or just with one correction. It has a hard time recognizing names and jargon, so entering this blog post with speech would need a lot of correcting. You do need an active connection to the internet as the spoken words are sent to a server where they are detailed interpretation gets done. As you speak you will see the result of recognition by the iPhone. A fraction of a second later this is replaced by the server interpretation. The dictation function is available in the keyboard.

Any place where you can use the keyboard you can press the microphone and use dictation.
This will take care that the words you speak will be converted to characters that are input into the current input item. You can have more than one language keyboard installed. Use the Globe button to switch keyboards (and language). In iOS8 you can turn on the speech recognition in the Settings > General > Keyboards section:

I have done some tests on the speech recognition of Android devices, and this is pretty good, although it cannot match the iPhone at the moment. Speech recognition within Apex applications You can use the dictation with any Apex application out of the box. Once you have activated the dictation the microphone will be available in the keyboard and keyboard entry can be replaced by speech to text conversion.
There are a few limitations however. Some data types need conversion:

• Numbers below 10 are converted to words, not digits. Amount may contain a currency sign 
• Spoken times might not be in the right format
• Dates will most likely not be in the format expected by Apex. If the spoken text is recognized as a date the month name will be used. 

The items based on these item types will need to implement a conversion for spoken input, so the form needs to be changed.
Furthermore it is not possible to enter controls that do not expose the keyboard. Amongst others these check boxes, radio groups, select lists and HTML5 date and time controls.

Apart from the above it is not practical to enter by speech each item separately. You need 3 taps per item. In most cases keyboard entry will be faster. You will only benefit when entering large texts like remarks or descriptions.

Input of multiple items at once 

As mentioned above the entry of separate items is not efficient. Another way to use speech recognition is by creating a new input item especially for speech entry. The spoken content of this item is split into item content using stop words. This way multiple items can be input by speaking one sentence. Another advantage of this approach is that the necessary processing can be performed while analysing the sentence before placing the values into the items. So the form items them selves need not be changed.
The processing can also be extended to special cases. It enables for example the use of relative dates, like yesterday or Monday last week.

Example form 

I have built a sample Apex application for speech input. This is based on the mobile Apex application that I use on a daily base to register my expenses. To enter an expenses the date, the amount spent, the name of the shop and a description of the purchase should be input. A separate item is available for the speech input.
The values can be entered in one sentence of the following structure:
first item always is the description

• the shop name follows after the stop word at
• the amount is preceded by the stop word for. The amount is preferably entered with currency, for example two euro fifty. This results in the most accurate recognition and formatting
• the date can be entered using the stop word on or as a relative date ( yesterday, Monday last week)

 Except for the description there is no prescribed input order. An example input would be:

Bread and milk at Tesca for $4.65 yesterday 

When leaving the speech input item the sentence is analysed and the content is written to the various input items. The example would result in:

date	date one day before today
shop	Tesca
amount	4.65
description	Bread and milk

The user can check whether all the input is correctly filled. If it’s all right he can submit the data and a new record is created.
Now try it yourself by opening this link on your mobile phone.

http://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=vi_demo

You can login with the username password combination guest/welcome. Behind the link you will find an application to enter expenses with speech input. The instructions can be found under the menu item Manual.

When is speech input useful? 

This way of entering is typically not for occasional use. You have to be used to the way the sentence is formed and which possibilities are available. After getting used to entering the form by speech you will not want to enter it through the keyboard any more. Mobile users that have to record their actions regularly could use this kind of entry. This could be for example a salesman, a service engineer or a nurse. For all these workers entering the data directly after the process or as part of the process frees them from filling in paper forms that need to be input on a desktop computer at a later time.

Future developments 

I plan to create a plugin for speech input supporting several languages. With this plugin it will be easy to enable existing Apex forms for speech input.
The current software does not support check boxes or list of values, I will be working on that too.

Please let me know whether you would think such a plugin useful and what use you see for it.

Happy Apexing