My personal journey with programming started more than two decades ago. Back then, the one language that I was very passionate and determined to master was Java. Early in my career, I would find any opportunity to attend a Sun Microsystems event like the Sun Tech Days, where I had the opportunity to learn about the constantly evolving platform that went from desktop, to enterprise and then on mobile devices. I can still remember watching the cool things you could do with Lego Mindstorms and an embedded Java runtime, and the vision that JXTA was going to revolutionise the Internet of Things with its state-of-the-art, peer-to-peer technology.
A Call to Aid
Every Singaporean Son grows up to respond to a codeword alongside an image of a soldier on guard.
When your codeword is flashed on the screen, you wrap up whatever you are doing, head home, pack, bid your goodbyes and then report to camp. Hence, when I heard this call to help, instinct kicked in and I had to respond.
APEX Challenge Coin 2020 Edition
Probably too late for New Year greetings, but not if you also celebrate the Lunar New Year that's coming really soon. For readers who, like me, celebrate this festival, I'd like to take the opportunity to wish you 新年快乐,万事如意!
It's now been almost a year since the APEX Challenge Coin was released, and I must say, it's made 2019 a year to remember!
Watch Your Weight
A reader left an interesting comment/question in my previous post on Making the Move to the Autonomous Database:
"Would You explain how can i check my on-premise DB to satisfy ADB size limitation 20G? What is the size 20G of?"
This is an excellent question to ask before embarking on any Autonomous Database (ADB) migration plans and so I dug a bit deeper.
OGB Appreciation Day: Challenge Coin Sponsors
My #ThanksOGB will be short and sweet!
Most in the community probably don't know, but I am a sucker for military stories and even more crazy about hard-to-find memorabilia. Earlier this year, I took a gamble and started a little social experiment and minted a small batch of APEX Challenge Coins.
The coins demonstrated our deep appreciation for APEX developers who have impacted our lives. Through the process of distributing them worldwide, I was blessed to have basked in the warmth of givers and the happiness of receivers. Words cannot describe the emotions and joy I felt each time someone opens his or her little mail packet to find a gift of gratitude.
So... for my #ThanksOGB appreciation post this year, I wanted to express again, my heartfelt gratitude to all APEX Challenge Coin sponsors for making this project a success. Thank you for supporting APEX developers!
Making the Move to the Autonomous Database
In my previous post, I mentioned that I have created my Oracle Cloud Free Tier account and provisioned an Autonomous Database (ADB). Now, I'm ready to move my existing Oracle Application Express (APEX) to this new environment. Next, I'll describe the steps I took to move (1) workspace, (2) application and (3) data, from the old to new database.
Autonomous DB - The Developers' Playground
As mentioned in a previous post, the Free Tier for Oracle Cloud (OCI) is every Oracle Developer's dream. For a while now, I have hosted a personal Oracle Application Express (APEX) instance on Linode. It currently runs an older Oracle Database 11gR2 Express Edition (XE), and I would like to upgrade it to version 18c. The key issue I had though, was that the existing virtual machine hosted on Linode, only has one gigabyte of RAM and that does not meet the 18c XE minimum requirement of two. That left me procrastinating for a long time, but perhaps a blessing in disguise. With this new offering, the next steps are pretty obvious.
That One Thing
Too good to be true? No, it's true!!!
After hearing the rumours for a few years now, Mr Larry Ellison finally announced the availablility of a Free Tier for the Oracle Cloud. The gift bundle includes two small compute instances and two Autonomous Databases. These offerings are a tiny fraction of what the Oracle Cloud provides, but are sufficient for Oracle Developers to maintain their own 24x7 development environments and possibly even production applications for small businesses and non-profit organisations.
Like everyone else in the Oracle Application Express (APEX) community, I wasted no time in getting my account provisioned and am currently working towards moving workspaces and applications from my old personal APEX instance, hosted on Linode.
Guiding Search
If you asked me, I think Mike Hichwa's favourite 19.2 new feature is Faceted Search. Since the early adopter programme was launched on September 13, 2019, Mike has tweeted seven times about the EA (up till Sep 15).
See https://twitter.com/mikehichwa1/status/1172569124528017410.
A Case for Markdown
Twin Meetup Groups
In a blink of an eye, it has been more than four years since I set up the ORCLAPEX-YVR Meetup Group. This is a Meetup group in the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia, that serves as a platform for promoting interest and supporting local Oracle Application Express (APEX) professionals and enthusiasts.
For those unaware, as organisers, we pay a biannual organiser's fee. Thanks to ODTUG's, these fees are kindly sponsored by #GetInolved initiative.
Thank you ODTUG!
Recently, I had an epiphany...
Remote Coding with Visual Studio Code
Support for remote development is one of the newer features of Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) announced in 2019 that I'm most excited about. With the Remote Development Extension Pack, developers are able to work with code on remote servers using SSH, Docker containers and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
Day 28 - 30 Days on the Oracle Cloud
With only three days remaining for my 30-day trial, I will finally close these series by discussing my experiences dealing with various levels of support from Oracle. Having used the Oracle Cloud (OCI) both in my day job and as a technology evangelist, I have had the opportunity to engage Oracle support at various levels: sales, customer and technical.
Day 22 - 30 Days on the Oracle Cloud
Oracle Function was announced late last year (2018), with limited availability to select Oracle Cloud customers. The platform is built on Fn and is Oracle's solution for developers wanting to deploy services using a Serverless Framework.
As succinctly explained by Kaslin Fields, a Fn function is a small embodiment of code that listens and speaks to HTTP streams. Ideally, each Fn function serves one, and only one purpose. It can be implemented in wide variety of programming languages and they are listed here (see the list of runtime options available).
Day 17 - 30 days on the Oracle Cloud
In case you missed it (which is almost impossible), the Oracle Autonomous Database (AutonomousDB) is Oracle's hottest offering on the Oracle Cloud and it now comes fitted with what is arguably the best feature of the Oracle Database: Oracle Application Express (APEX). I have a few more days to go with this trial, so why not take one out for a spin?