This post is partly a reminder for myself; it's about a part of SQL, which I tend to forget to use. But if I forget about it, then that means that others are likely to as well, right? (heh)

Anyhow, I was trying to create a process for maintaining sample data in an application--the users can install an application, muck up the sample data all they want, and then hit a "reset" button which takes everything back to the beginning. Pretty straightforward; just delete the data, and re-insert it. But the sample data is just to get people started using the apps, so we can't just wipe the table--they may be using some of the data, or may have made changes that they want to keep, etc.
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My wife has entered the self-publishing fray with Shattered: broken fairy tales, a collection of three short stories. She's planning on following this up with some of her novel and novelette works; she wanted to start with something simpler in order to figure out the whole e-publishing process.

My wife is a writer. I've learned a lot about the writing profession from her. (She is, of course, the one who introduced me to National Novel Writing Month, and her participation in it lead to my creating WriteTrack.) Lately, she's been looking into self-publishing; the rise of eReaders (Kindle, Nook, iBooks, etc.) have significantly lowered the barriers (and the stigma) of putting your work out on your own for others to enjoy. Of course, there's at least one new barrier in place--one which anyone who was doing web development in the mid-to-late nineties is familiar with.

The problem is a lack of standards. You can't just create a single ePub file and expect it to look the same on every eReader. Nor can you create a single file and put it in all of the various stores (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and the smaller options) at once; each one has different requirements (and, of course, you need a different resolution/aspect ratio cover image for each). On the up side, there are simulators for the Kindle and Nook available for the PC or the Mac, and you can simulate an iPad/iPhone on your Mac, but simulations and reality don't always match up. There are lots of blog posts out there about how to deal with these headaches, and how to convert your WYSISYG Word document into the various e-book formats, but it's still a process. My wife complained that it feels like it's taking longer to convert her first offering--a collection of short stories--than it took to write it.

Watching her go through this, I couldn't help but be reminded of early web development. Originally, web pages were much simpler than they are today, but everyone kept coming up with new features, new functionality. And none of them did it the same. If you wanted your web page to look good, it had to work well in Internet Explorer (multiple versions, of course; 3.0 and 4.0 behaved very differently), and Opera, and Netscape...which was a challenge. Now, if your pages conform to the W3C standards, you can be pretty confident that it'll work well in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari; you may have to tweak it a bit for IE, but even that's becoming less of an issue. And today's web pages benefit tremendously from this.

Here's hoping that e-publishing follows that path as well. And quickly.

Sometimes, you do everything right, and it's still wrong. Or, at least, it seems that way.

I've started working on building a mobile version of WriteTrack (for those who haven't heard, APEX 4.1 includes some mobile capabilities), and, naturally, one of the first things to do is to get the templates set up. I decided that I want to have the option of adding buttons to my page headers (next and previous, for instance), but I don't want them hard coded.
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Sorry for the long delay since my last post--life has been very hectic, and something had to give. Well, multiple things, actually, but this blog was one of them.

At this point, however, I expect to be able to return to regular blogging, as I have completed my move from Vermont to Virginia. Ok, so maybe not completed, exactly--there's still a lot of stuff in boxes, and various bits of red tape still to wade through--but I have a new place in Virginia, we sold the old house, my family is with me, and life is slowly starting to return to something resembling order. Whew.

I recently got an iPad. It's a fun little device; I tend to grab it rather than my laptop if I want to check my email or my RSS feed. It powers on faster (just open the case and you're ready to go), it's a lot more portable (convenient if you're going somewhere and wanting to take notes), and it's pretty much as powerful as I need in a computer.

My one complaint, though, is that I can't do much APEX development on it.
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There are two blog posts I'd like to bring to your attention today. The first is by my co-worker, Marc Sewtz, discussing the functionality that's available in APEX 4.1 to facilitate mobile application development. This is really exciting stuff.

The second is the joint review my wife talked me into doing on her blog of Brandon Sanderson's fantasy novel, The Way of Kings. This has nothing to do with APEX, but it's my first guest post, so...

Here in the U.S., November 11th is specifically set aside as Veteran's Day--a special day to remember all of those who have served in our country's military. I normally ignore and/or mock the "Hallmark Holidays", but this is one day that I feel is worth having around. Today, we honor people not for trivial things, but for being willing to step forward and serve something far greater than themselves, potentially even to die for it. I believe these men and women are truly deserving of all of our respect, honor, and praise.
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One of the tips I got out of the Expert Oracle Application Express book (Kindle version available here) is that you can build a link to an interactive report which automatically applies a filter. The book suggests this for drilling down from one interactive report to another; it can also be used to force a user to select a value for a primary key column--this can be a major performance booster, especially for interactive reports based on views. You can do the same thing by referencing a page item in your where clause, but then the user doesn't have visibility to the fact that their data has been filtered. Depends on what you want. But one thing the chapter doesn't mention (or, if it does, I missed it) is how to apply a full-row filter in a link, as if the user had typed something into the search bar. Google failed me, so I ended up having to go back to the source (thanks, Sharon!)
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One thing about my new job is that the APEX development team is rather widely distributed around the globe. Combine that with a slow housing market and an understanding boss, and you've got a great opportunity to explore the joys and sorrows of telecommuting. (Translation: I'm working from home in Vermont until we manage to sell this place.)
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