SQL Developer 3.1 EA1 - Drill Down Report

I got a question on twitter from @goryunov about how to do drill down reports.  I plan on doing a few posts on reports since so much of the dialogs have changed.  That make this the first of a few blogs on reports.

Step 1.  Right click on the User Defined Reports and choose New Report

Step 2. Create a "Departments" report by naming it and entering the SQL.  This dialog has drastically changed from what was in the previous versions.  More on that later.

Step 3. Create a "Employees By Department" report.  This report will use a bind variable from the Departments report which is the DEPARTMENT_ID column from the query.

Step 4. Now edit the Departments report and choose the Drill Down item in the left options.  Click "Add Report"  This makes a new row in the table.  The Name part is whatever name you like.  The second will be a drop list of all reports in the tool.  In this case, I scrolled down and choose my "Employees By Departments" report which is using the bind variable.

Step 5. That's all there is to it. Now when I run the Departments report there's a new menu option for all drillable reports defined in Step 4.

Step 6.  When I choose that menu option, the values require are passed along.

SQL Developer 3.1 EA1 - Schema Diff

It was great showing everyone last week at OOW what was coming.  The only thing better is giving people the software to start using.  Now that it's out, I'll do some blogging to get some of the new areas pointed out.

One of the major areas of work in SQL Developer 3.1 is the diff generation between 2 schemas.  This is completely rewritten from the ground up.  That's interesting but maybe more interesting to you is that it no longer requires the change management pack.  That means you are free to use this feature now without any worries of what is licensed and on which databases.

It's still in the normal place in the Tools menu.  The first screen now gives you more control over what you are going to want to consider is a difference.  For example, matching constraints based on the name or the definition.  If I have a check contraint in two databases both doing the same things but have different names, it will not be flagged if I choose contrants by definition.

At the end of the wizard, there is a new tree representation of the differences between the schemas.  The tree shows everything possible.  Unchecking the "Show Equal Objects" will restrict to just the ones with changes.  Then in the lower portion of the screen, you get the standard diff window that highlights the changes in the objects.

Clicking the script tab you'll see the alter statement.

The finally clicking the SQL icon in the toolbar will generate the script to sync the two connections.

Oracle Express Edition 11.2 is here!

Oracle XE 11.2 is now available on Windows 32 and Linux 64.  It can be downloaded here.  I'll be shortly putting together another VirtualBox image so it can be used on other platforms.  This is also a great database to try out the Learning Library labs on.

In case anyone doesn't know, Oracle Express Edition is the free database.  The limitation has gone up to 11.

3 Upcoming OTN Developer Days

There's a few more of the OTN Database Developer Day free training events coming up.

The first is next week in Reston,VA. This is the full four track event.  If you are able to make it, it's a great chance to talk to some of the development staff that run the event.  Mike Hichwa will be giving the keynote.

The agenda for this even can be found here: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/77471-wwmk11054222mpp004c004-oem-452411.html?ssSourceSiteId=otnen


The second and the most widely available is going to be on September 13th at 9am Pacific.  This  will be our first virtual one version of the event we've been doing live for over a year.  The virtual event is great for people that can't make it to the live ones.  You can register here:
https://oracle.6connex.com/portal/database/login/?langR=en_US&mcc=SQLDevblogVDDDB9132011

The agenda for the day is here: https://oracle.6connex.com/upload/124/483/1314393443040_67_.pdf

The lastly is a Database only track coming up on September 20th in Calgary.  For this day, we are only running the 1 track and it's database focused.  There's Application Express, Times Ten, XML DB, and of course SQL Developer and Modeler.

The agenda for this even can be found here: http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=140137&src=7328803&src=7328803&Act=14


As always, all these events use the Database App Development VM. If you've not heard of it before, it's a VM that we build which is preconfigured with all the software and material for most of the labs ( minus .NET and jdev )  It's an 11.2.0.2 EE version of the database with Application Express 4 ( yes we're updating it ), SQL Devleoper and Modeler 3, Times Ten 11r2, the APEX Listener, and all the labs themselves.  Even if you can't make one of the events give the labs a try yourself but getting the VM from here:  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/community/developer-vm/index.html

Apex Listener + WLS + Serving static files from /i/

A common thing that people ask about is setting up the images directory in weblogic. The documentation explains how to generate an i.war file then deploy it.  This work great until the need arises to also host additional files like custom javascript or css.  This is a short video of how I setup the /i/ for my servers.  This setup lets any content in the directory be served out.  The one assumption is that you already have web logic setup and running.  In my case, the http server is on port 8080.  

Here's the xml file that is in the web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN" "http://

java.sun.com/j2ee/dtds/web-app_2_3.dtd">

<web-app> 

</web-app>