Demonstration of 3 HTMLDB-based applications

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18th Oracle Developers Forum
Demonstration of3 HTMLDB-based applications
Camilla Stenersen, Giovanni Chierico, Nikolay
Tsyganov, François BriardIT-AIS-HR
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Introduction

• 1st presentation at 17th ODF in May 2005
• After 8 months of development,
• 3 applications have been
• designed and put in production
• by IT-AIS-HR.
• What is our experience?
• SIR François Briard
• PRT Nikolay Tsyganov
• CTA Camilla Stenersen
• What do we think of the tool?
• Pros Cons, Roadmap Giovanni Chierico

François Briard
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SIR Safety Information Registration

• SIR allows to
• Register safety courses attendance
• Follow safety courses
• Pass safety courses tests
• Manage safety courses registrations
• SIR offers two authentication modes
• AIS Login (web self training mode)
• Card scan (kiosk mode)
• Currently SIR proposes
• Basic Safety Registration (kiosk)
• LHC Machine Safety (1922 courses taken)
• ATLAS Safety (1123 courses taken)

François Briard
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Some useful features

1. Automatic page designNearly all administration
   pages have been created using a wizard then
   slightly modified
2. Processes based loggingProcesses allows easy
   monitoring and logging of the application
3. SVG graphicsCharts are very easy to generate,
   but not easy to modify

François Briard
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PRT Pre-Registration Tool
PRT allows firm's representatives to fill
electronic version of the Registration Form and
provide it to Registration Office days before the
actual arrival of personnel at CERN
Added to pre-registration process, PRT also
allows firms representatives to follow up the
lifecycle of their personnel at CERN Planned to
develop a Users Office PRT in 2006
Nikolay Tsyganov
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Some useful features

1. AuthenticationIntegrates with AIS login using
   CUSTOM_PAGE_SENTRY PL/SQL return boolean
   function
2. Authorization schemeManages access rights to all
   components (pages, regions, items,
   processes).Authorization schemes are fully
   customizable (using SQL, PL/SQL, Item values).
3. Validation- Mandatory fields- Checks of data
   types- Checks of content (accented characters,
   etc.)- Checks for data integrity for
   non-mandatory fields
4. Editable and read-only items depending on
   conditions
5. Printer-friendly version and conditional display
   of components
6. Hide and show regions, icons and debug info in
   the region titles

Nikolay Tsyganov
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CTA CERN Training Application

• Allows the users at the training department to
  add and edit information about courses and their
  participants
• People use EDH to register for a course, and are
  added to the database as waiting registrations.
• Stores information about resources (rooms) and
  reservations for them.
• Sends e-mails to participants.

EDH
Courses 2645 Sessions 3060 Regs 37208
Camilla Stenersen
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Some useful features

1. Custom PL/SQL regions.Regions can be created
   dynamically using the package UTL_HTTP which
   prints information on the screen.
2. E-mail sendingHTMLDB can use UTL_MAIL, which
   allows us to send emails from the application.
3. Functions can return queries used to generate the
   reports (Dynamic SQL)Code reusability issues
   addressed with computations
4. Request variablesWhen branching to a page, we
   can decide what to do based on the action used to
   reach the page
5. Overview of used templates, lists of values etc
   for each page

Camilla Stenersen
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Conclusions Trade-off
Effort

• Flexibility ? complexity
• Good for small-to-medium sized projects
• PL/SQL experienced developers
• Database driven web apps

JAVA
HTMLDB
App complexity
Giovanni Chierico
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Conclusions Pros Cons

-

• 100 web based
• Painless deployment
• Fast lifecycle
• Development interface
• Quality of widgets templates
• Full PL/SQL power available
• Big community

• - Error handling
• Debugging
• Code reusability
• Version control
• Extension of standards components
• Proprietary solution

?

• Life expectancy
• Comes bundled with all versions of OracleDB from
  10g including Express Ed.
• Version 3.0 announced for end 2006 (visual layout
  editor, wizards, printing)
• Very high quality of support (forums and direct
  contact)

Giovanni Chierico
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Conclusions Application Express 2.0

• SQL Workshop
• New DB Object Browser
• Integrated Query Builder
• Utilities
• Interface
• Dynamic pull down menus
• HTML CSS clean-up

Giovanni Chierico
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Resources

• Home http//www.oracle.com/technology/products/da
  tabase/application_express/index.html
• Forums http//forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa
  ?forumID137 (more than 50K msgs)
• Request Test Workspace _at_ Oracle
  http//apex.oracle.com/
• AskTom http//asktom.oracle.com/ This is the
  application development environment used to build
  the asktom site itself. You won't do it any other
  way after giving this IDE a try -- believe me. It
  is just too easy.

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Questions (and possibly answers)?