Application Express 3.1 released on OTN

Today, February 29, 2008, Application Express 3.1 was released for download on the Oracle Technology Network. Start at http://apex.oracle.com, follow the link to Download Application Express, and away you go.

Sharon posted an announcement here.

apex.oracle.com upgraded to Application Express 3.1

Yesterday, February 27, the hosted demonstration instance of Oracle Application Express at http://apex.oracle.com was upgraded to Application Express 3.1. This is one of the last milestones in the release criteria for Application Express. If we can successfully upgrade an instance with over 11,000 workspaces and over 30,000 applications, this usually bodes well for the product release.

It's an incredibly valuable learning experience running and managing apex.oracle.com. There's nothing like using your own software.

There were over 1,100 participants in the hosted Early Adopter's release of Application Express 3.1. The feedback was invaluable, from comments to suggestions to bug reports. The Application Express community has my gratitude.

Joel

Should Oracle Application Express be translated into other languages?

Today, Oracle Application Express is delivered in a total of 10 languages:

• de - German
• es - Spanish
• fr - French
• it - Italian
• ja - Japanese
• ko - Korean
• pt-br - Brazilian Portuguese
• en-us - English United States
• zh-cn - Simplified Chinese
• zh-tw - Traditional Chinese

As you may already know, a developer-created Application Express application can be translated into any language. But for the development environment of Application Express (Application Builder, SQL Workshop, Access Migration, Utilities, Internal Administration), should this be translated into additional languages?

I am specifically interested in the market opportunity for Application Express, and not necessarily your personal preference.

If you wish to let your voice be heard, please feel free to take this one-question survey at:

http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=apex_lang_survey:1:0

Who uses apex.oracle.com?

For those who don't know, Oracle hosts a demonstration version of Oracle Application Express at http://apex.oracle.com. Anyone on the planet can sign up for a workspace, and as long as you don't run a production or commercial Web site, don't do anything illegal and also understand that there is no Service Level Agreement, it's all yours to try out Oracle Application Express. The ultimate goal, though, is for anyone to try Application Express with without having to download, install, or configure anything. All you need is a modern Web browser. And trust me - no one from sales or marketing will call.

In late 2007, I became inspired and installed some Google Analytics JavaScript code in the Login Message and System Message areas of the Application Express instance (you access this from internal administration, Manage Service -> Messages). This tracks access to the Login page and almost all of the pages in Application Builder, SQL Workshop and Utilities. It does not track any information for user-created applications - only the development environment and the general APEX login page. And it's only used for general information and also to satisfy my curiosity.

If you've ever used Google Analytics before, you're already aware of the wealth of information that is recorded. So who uses apex.oracle.com? Looking at the number of visits broken down by country from December 1, 2007 through February 12, 2008:

• United States - 30%
• United Kingdom - 10.5%
• India - 10%
• Germany - 6%
• Netherlands - 3%

What I did find most surprising was that Japan was listed as #12, even though I know there has been reasonably good interest in Application Express in Japan, China and Korea since the days of HTML DB 1.5.

The top 25 are here:



I also found interesting the keywords people used on Google to navigate to apex.oracle.com. Four of the top ten are related to Denes Kubicek. Congratulations, Denis!



Please don't confuse these statistics with overall scalability of this instance or Application Express. I'm only presenting the Google Analytics visits. For the past week, on apex.oracle.com, there were:

• 1,637,781 page views
• 2,093 distinct applications used in the past week
  
• 2,947 distinct users authenticated in the past week
• 224 new workspaces approved
• 13,745 total workspaces

It's running on a Dell PowerEdge 1950 with 2 Dual Core Xeon processors. Average load on the database server hovers around 16%.



Update: In response to Denes' request for the top used applications, I've found the following in descending order of activity in the past week:

PROMED:         ProMED-mail Public Site
WORK:           OTN EXAMPLES
DKUBICEK:       My Demo Application
RTI:            OCU_BCK
ASKSTEVEN:      AskSteven
EBA:            Checklist Manager 1.0
EBA:            Online Store 1.0
DBTOOLS:        SQL Developer Exchange
OSC:            OnScreen
HENRY:          Avance Issue Tracker 1.0
ACES:           Oracle ACEs
MIKA:           MyFirehouse
PALGW:          Applicant Tracking System
EBA:            Asset Manager 1.0
EMAIL_HELPDESK: Email Helpdesk
JOEL2:          Workspace Purge

Granted, I did have to filter some stuff out, because Application Builder and SQL Workshop are always in the top 10. Also, there are some applications for SQL Developer and JDeveloper check-for-updates which are not really relevant to Denes' question.

I think Denes is really trying to rub it in. Note how the Workspace Purge application has generated much activity as people scramble to preserve their seldom-used workspaces.

Oracle Unbreakable Linux and Oracle VM Server Virtualization - Briefing in Columbus, Ohio

For those who care (and are in Central Ohio), next week Wednesday, February 20, 2008, my good friend Sergio Leunissen will be in town presenting Oracle Unbreakable Linux and Oracle VM Server Virtualization. All of the details are here:

http://www.oracle.com/dm/08q3field/12389_ev_ent_arc_brie_feb20.html