Ubuntu plus SQL Developer

I'm not going to initiate endless, historical discussion about the superiority of the operating systems; I'm just stating the fact that my personal number one here is Ubuntu and the rest of its family, e.g. Mint.

I can make an analogical statement about databases. My personal number one here is Oracle DB and no matter how tolerant I am, I will always interpret DB solutions through the Oracle DB perspective.

So, after such a short introduction here, I have my final, personal, yet simple operational environment of the system: Ubuntu + Oracle DB.

Before going inside the Oracle DB, I recommend expanding standard DB user interface with a more powerful command-line tool called: “GQLPlus”. The difference between GQLPlus and SQL*Plus is command-line editing and history, plus table-name and column-name completion. But before installing GQLPlus, a piece of information. It crashes quite often in my environment so, before you get angry with me for this tool recommendation, you could try a free of charge Oracle Sql Developer tool. According to its java-based engine, the tool is not the performance leader but according to its economical efficiency, it is still worth using.

The SQL Developer installation may be a little bit tricky (java home etc.) so for more instructions about smooth installation on Ubuntu see here: "Oracle SQL Developer on Ubuntu".

Autumn and Winter

Autumn and Winter – probably the best seasons for change or for doing something meaningful with our thoughts.
So, short look at myself, and what can we see apart from big eyes and cheap poker face? :)
We see the doubt: "To write or not to write?"
An alternative answer is: Maybe this is the time called: "share your brain".
The next question: Would it be painful?
An alternative answer is: What about procedure called: "once per week"?
Okay. Let it be the truth.
At first I will start from some "snapshot from my past".
The story began from the name "the3time.com" and then, after a nice start, it stopped, and I think it will not go on.
Shortly speaking, I did that small Oracle Apex service for one of my colleagues and we had some hope that this small business would go life and we would be able to create something profitable on our own.
The start was good, clients were interested, they even liked the Apex system, but the most important was that they did not like to make orders, or, in other words, they did not vote with their money, they did not order any service.
Maybe it is good for wild animals but it was not good for our small business :)

As always we can find many excuses to feel better about our failures. This, however does not matter. The final result does not change at all: "the project has not succeeded, we failed". The good thing for Apex technology was that the business had failed but not the technology ;)

My private short resume from the3time, or in other words, the lesson learned from this project: it is very hard to have regular work (to work five days for 8 hours) and having returned home to do powerful new business project with the same power.
You can create the system during your free evening time but this time is to short to create the trust of your clients.

Book recommendation: “CSS. The Missing Manual”

I have enjoyed this book: “CSS. The Missing Manual” and would recommend it to those looking for learning CSS.
There are a lot of hands-on exercises that go along with the instruction.
Have a nice reading.

Book recommendation: "Even Faster Websites"

This is the second book for the "Web Sites Performance" that I have read after finishing "High Performance Web Sites". This second edition (the second part by the same author) offers additional rules for speeding up the loading of a web page and responsiveness. Even Faster Web Sites presents 15 more rules that the author Steve Souders has developed from his work as a web operations manager at Yahoo! and Google. This book is completely practical and easy to understand and apply.

After these two books I can start investigating what could be improved with APEX applications performance.
Will see ... ;)

Book recommendation: "High Performance Web Sites"

At this moment I'm not sure about APEX performance but I think that after a few web architecture optimization tasks, it would work faster. But before that, I decided to invest some time into "Web Sites Performance" science and to find out what could be done better within the APEX platform ;)

I've read a very good, yet thin, (only 135 pages) book High Performance Web Sites which demonstrates that 80% of the time takes for a web page to load is due to an inefficient browser activity, and the book provides 14 rules for reducing the response time from 20% to 25%. And here is the 14 optimization rules:

1.Make fewer HTTP requests
2.Use a CDN
3.Add an Expires header
4.Gzip components
5.Put CSS at the top
6.Move JS to the bottom
7.Avoid CSS expressions
8.Make JS & CSS external
9.Reduce DNS lookups
10.Minify JS
11.Avoid redirects
12.Remove duplicate scripts
13.Turn off ETags
14.Make Ajax cachableand small


In my opinion, every APEX or any Web developer should read this. But if you do not have time to read you could at least try this software: YSlow

Understanding Concurrency and Concurrent Users

I have found a very nice and easy video about concurrency in the IT systems.
So, before you decide how many Concurrent User your APEX server will be able to handle, just watch these two videos:
Concurrency and Concurrent Users

This instructional video from HP explains the characteristics of “concurrency” as it is used in the context of performance testing and designing a load test.

Debugging mode and 404-not found

During the Apex development, it is very good to have additional information about the error: "404-not found page".
Read this Troubleshooting the 404-not found error on XE and enable dubug mode.