APEX Alpe Adria - A New APEX Conference That You Should Attend

Have you heard of APEX Alpe Adria?  It's the latest "All APEX" conference, joining APEX World and APEX Connect as high-quality conferences dedicated to Oracle APEX developers and related technologies.

APEX Alpe Adria is a very modestly-priced one-day conference occurring on April 20, 2018 in Graz, Austria.  The list of speakers that they have organized is unbelievably impressive - they are all very knowledgeable & experienced, as well as very polished presenters.  All presentations will be in English.  Also, the evening before the conference, there will be an Ask an ACE session, where you can ask any question to a panel of highly experienced Oracle ACEs.

APEX Alpe Adria is the creation of three different Oracle partners, Dario Bilić from BiLog d.o.o., Aljaž Mali from Abakus Plus d.o.o., and Peter Raganitsch from FOEX Gmbh.  As Peter told me, they are not organizing this conference for commercial purposes.  Instead, their primary goal is to bring a high-quality dedicated APEX conference to a region where there is significant demand.  And they've developed a 100% APEX Conference - everyone and everything is driven by Oracle APEX:  the conference Web site, abstract submission, abstract voting, the back-end administration apps, everything.  The conference is already a great testament of what is possible with the Oracle Database & Oracle APEX.

While the location primarily caters to Austria, Slovenia and Croatia, the appeal stretches far beyond the immediate region.  As you can see in the map below, Graz is a short 500 miles (1.5 hour flight) from many places in central Europe.  And even though it may be a bit longer to travel for those outside the circle, I'm hoping that this conference will attract many of our other customers and partners from Eastern Europe and the Middle East.  Tickets have already been sold to conference attendees from Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, United Kingdom, Croatia, Macedonia, Russia, Slovenia, and the USA.  If you want an easy way to get connected and immersed into the global APEX community, please attend APEX Alpe Adria.  It's that simple.

Patrick Wolf & Christian Neumueller from the Oracle APEX Development team will be joining me to kick off this inaugural conference and show our support for this growing APEX community.  We hope to see you there!

How do I Refresh a Region or Report after a Dialog is Closed?

I was going to write this blog post back in December 2017, as this question comes up frequently.  And even though there are numerous examples available in the Sample Database Application and other sample applications, and it's even in the documentation, the solution still isn't always readily apparent.

I received this question from an internal employee today:

"When I edit the page and update the row and save and close the modal page, existing report doesn't refresh the page with revised value.   It was working on another page, but not working on this new page (I built last week).  Couldn't find a way to refresh it as soon as I close the modal window with saved data."

He has a report and a form in his application, and the form opens up in a modal dialog.  He simply wants the report on the parent page to refresh after the modal dialog is closed.  Simple, right?

For anyone well-versed in APEX, you'll find this blog post superfluous.  But for everyone else who is looking for the quick explanation, as I've received this question 3 times in the past couple months, here it is.

1. On the report page, create a new Dynamic Action and enter the following attributes:
• Name: <provide a meaningful name>
• Event: Dialog Closed
• Selection Type: Region
• Region:<choose your report region>


2. Select the True action of the Dynamic Action and enter the following attributes:
• Action: Refresh
• Selection Type: Region
• Region: <choose your report region>

That's really all there is to it.  If you have multiple regions on the parent page, you could add multiple True actions for the dynamic action.  If the triggering event of the modal dialog is a button instead of a region, you could specify that as your Selection Type for the triggering event.  If there are multiple regions on the page which could open the modal dialog, you could even use a jQuery Selector and reference multiple elements as your Selection Type for the triggering event. 

For example, if you're converting a non-modal form and report to use a modal form, and you wish to refresh the report after the modal dialog is closed (after creating a new record), you'll need to associate the triggering event with the button.  The steps would be:

1. On the report page, create a new Dynamic Action and enter the following attributes:
• Name: <provide a meaningful name>
• Event: Dialog Closed
• Selection Type: Button
• Region:<choose your button, for example, your Create button>


2. Select the True action of the Dynamic Action and enter the following attributes:
• Action: Refresh
• Selection Type: Region
• Region: <choose your report region>

You should get this behavior out of the box when creating an application with a report and form, or adding a report and form to your application.  But if you're manually adding components, then it's really quite easy and straightforward to add this functionality to your APEX app.

If you install the Sample Database Application, you'll find numerous examples of this dynamic action refresh operation after the close of a modal dialog.  And it is briefly documented in this tip.

APEX World 2018: Het gaat los!

While we're delighted that there are more APEX-focused conferences springing up around the globe, there is one conference that started this trend, and that is...APEX World.  Thanks to the foresight of the Dutch Oracle User Group, Robin Buitenhuis and Oracle ACE Learco Brizzi, APEX World was started 9 years ago, with the primary purpose of bringing together the growing APEX community in the Netherlands.  Since that time, it has grown into a premier conference for the APEX community in Europe and beyond.

When I first had the opportunity to present at APEX World in 2014, it was a one-day event in the quaint city of Zeist.  Since that time, APEX World has blossomed into a large, international, multi-track 2-day conference with more than 400 attendees expected in 2018.  Even better, the conference itself is on board the cruise ship SS Rotterdam, which is very historic and beautiful.  The theme of this years conference is "A Deep Dive into Low Code", and it will be on March 22nd and 23rd in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Four members of the Oracle APEX product development team will be at APEX World 2018 - John Snyders, Anthony Rayner, Shakeeb Rahman and David Peake.  We are all very open, we would love to understand what you're doing, and we also want to learn how we can help you be successful.  I encourage you to come to this great event and join the large and growing international community at APEX World 2018.

Infographic from APEX World 2017.  2018 will be even bigger and better!