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OOW 2009 : Tuesday

This day started easy by skipping the keynotes. So the first session I attended was at 11:30, called The Life of a Query in which the presenter revealed the details on the internal processing of the Oracle database.
Next was Giving your Application Express a Web 2.0 Facelift. Not that many new things, but Raj is always very entertaining to watch. The most interesting thing I saw was a new prototype of the APEX Developer page on Patrick Wolfs laptop: Instead of the current Page Definition view (with Page, Regions, Items, Processes and so on), the same information was presented in an DHTMLX tree view! Patrick showed how you can easily re-order Items, copy buttons etc by just dragging them around in the tree. And on every object you can do a right mouse click that would present the actions you can do with that object. It looked very slick! We shortly discussed whether or not you should expand that tree with one level (Page) or even two (Application), to make it even easier to copy and move Pages or Regions around. Imagine something like the tree view of your application in Oracle Designer - but then better looking. I guess this prototype won't make it to APEX 4.0, but it shows that the product is still evolving - even after APEX 4.0!
After that Understanding Real Application Clusters for Developers was on the program - I guess using Dummies instead of Developers was to offensive. However it was a reasonable good overview about RAC, but didn't associate about anything that a developer might have to do with it. And the presenter ran seriously out of time....
The last one of the day: Oracle Performance by Design. A presentation full of half truths and generalizations. So no further comments....
In thee evening there were three meet-ups to attend: The Blogger MeetUp, Benelux Cocktail Party and the APEX MeetUp. I had to pick and did the first and the last. Alex G., who organized the Blogger thing this year, also introduced a nice competition. He/she with the most names on their new T-shirt (with the text "I met more bloggers than you"), would win a netbook! So there was a lot of signing going on! Good job, thank you Alex!
And of course, at the APEX meetup al the usual suspects where there. And - as every time - it was really nice to meat each other again!

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