Hi there I'm creating a inventory database system using oracle apex currently my place of employment is using apex 5.1 but are looking to upgrade to the new version (19.1) shortly after my contract ends I'm curious if anyone is aware of anything, in particular, that is going to break or is more likely to break, (ie master detail) so that it can be avoided or documented
From my experience, nothing will "break" (meaning: you won't get any ORA-xxxxx errors), but some things won't work any more (which is maybe even worse; if there was an error, you'd look at it and, possibly, fix it).
The old tabular forms were ugly and kind of difficult to work with. Interactive grid is prettier, but I hate it & try not to use it whenever possible (what do I do, then? Use Interactive report + form). If you decide to upgrade tabular forms into interactive grids, note that code you might have written probably won't work.
Yet another thing: charts. The ones I had in 5.1 simply disappeared in 18.2 (OK, you'll upgrade to 19.1, but nonetheless ...). New charts are beautiful, but it'll take some time to fix them.
Finally, trees. I've used icons which helped users to easily distinguish values that are ON (green icons) from those that are OFF (red icons). In a new version, icons aren't visible any more and everything looks just the same; I have no idea what's ON and what's OFF.
Now, a question for you: why don't you upgrade now, before you create that application? If that isn't possible, consider installing XE database, put Apex 19.1 onto it and develop the application there. When the company you work with does the upgrade, the application should be OK.
Related
I'm currently trying to compile an old program (made with C++ builder 2 or 3) with the "current" Embarcadero RAD Studio XE2.
So, I was wondering whether there is an easy way to use the old code, as Borland once claimed to be fully compatible to lower versions... however I couldn't find a "project-file", only source-code (.cpp, .h, .res, etc.).
I tried to "add to project" the main .cpp, however there seem to be some wrong include-paths... it also seem to use the OWL-package and includes its important source-files...
I'm a bit confused which type of main project I have to open first, since you need to open a new project before adding the source to it. As the running .exe has a GUI, I tried a Form-Window first, but it may be better to use a console or service as the real form is produced within the code as far as I understand.
So, after installing OWL and correcting the include-paths, do you think it should be running fine? Or is there something else to take care of?
If your old project was using OWL, you're probably well outside of the supported upgrade path.
That being said, valid C++ code should still compile and work and I've heard of people using OWL with recent versions of C++Builder. (via OWLNext)
Regarding your confusion as to which type of project to use, I believe a console application would be your best bet. A forms application is completely wrong, that will bring in the VCL and give you no end of problems trying to reconcile the different windowing systems. A service application is a completely different beast as well, and isn't meant for GUI applications. A console application should work, but you'll need more. The OWLNext project has a wiki that should help quite a bit.
We are in the middle of a relatively large project which uses ExtJS3 and have already invested ~4 man-years, using several plugins and we have written some plugins ourselfs. After a quick glance at ExtJS4, it seems that we would have a lot of work to do to migrate the project to ExtJS4. Are there any strong reasons to switch to ExtJS4? Currently, it seems to me that compatibility with future browsers (or the lack thereof) is the only one.
We're in similar situation and our conclusion was to wait a bit more as Ext 3 is doing it's job. We experienced many problems in our "test" migration and I would say that it's more a rewrite of the application than a migration :(. Also, our experience showed that Ext JS 4 has some performance problems, forms are a bit different, store cannot reject changes, it's bigger. There are some very good new features like the new class system, mixins, new charts, ...
We have upgraded our application to ExtJS4 without fail.We are happy to say that ExtJS4 is fast compare to ExtJS3.A new class system,mixins,plugin-free charts,focus management...etc.,. But if you want to upgrade you need to change a lot of code because class system and config options are changed.We have tested the performance of our application using ExtJS3 and ExtJS4,so as per our observation ExtJS4 is fast and it will not break.As per our observation,CSS selectors are also changed if you want to customize the component you can easily do the thing in ExtJS4.
We tried to migrate from ExtJS3 to ExtJS4 previous week. Unfortunately I must say it is like translate english to german. A lot of work. From our point of view more or less just the charting system is plus, minus - a lot of components that we use are not supported, a lot of css customization shoud be done, working code in ExtJS3 breaks easily and there is sometimes almost impossible to find an error.
Not an expert but personally I'd start new project with extjs4 but leave exiting project alone. The charting stuff is amazing in 4!
The company I work for is building a managed force.com application as an integration with the service we provide.
We are having issues working concurrently on the same set of files due to the shoddy tooling that is provided with the force.com Eclipse plugin. If 2 developers are working on the same file, one is given a message that he can't save -- once he merges he has to manually force the plugin to push his changes to the server along with clicking 2 'Are you really sure' messages.
Basically, the tooling does a shoddy job of merging in changes and forces minutes of work every time the developer wants to save if another person has modified the file he's working on.
We're currently working around this by basically 'locking' individual files by letting co-workers know who is editing a file.
It feels like there has got to be a better way in this day and age. Does anyone know of a different toolset we could use, process we could change, or anything we can do to make this easier?
When working with the Force.com platform my current organisation has found a number of different approaches can work depending on the situation. We all use the Eclipse Force.com plugin without issues and have found the following set ups to work well.
We have a centralised version control system that we deploy from using a series of ant commands to a developer org instance. We then depending on the scope of the work either separate it off into chunks with each developer having their own development org and merging the changes and testing them regularly, or working in a single development org together (which if you have 2 developers should be no major problem) allowing you to have almost instant integration.
If you are both trying to work on the same file you should be pair programming anyway, but if working on two components of a similar system together, sharing the same org can allow you to develop in a fast and flexible manner by creating the skeleton of the system you wish to use and then individually fleshing out the detail.
I have used both methods extensively and a I say, work really well depending on the situation.
Each developer could work in separate development sandbox (if you have enterprise edition, I think 10 sandboxes with full config & limited amount of data are included in the fee?). From time to time you would merge your changes (diff tool from any version control system should be enough) and test them in integration environment. The chain development->integration->system test->Q&A-> production can be useful for other reasons too.
Separate trick to consider can be used if for example 2 guys work on the same trigger. I've learned it on the "DEV 401" course for Developers.
Move all your logic to classes. Seriously. They will be simpler to unit test too.
Add custom field (multi-select picklist) to User object. Values should be equal to each separate feature people are working on. It can hold up to 500 values so you should be safe.
For User account of developer 1 set "feature1" in the picklist. Set "feature2" for the other guy.
In the trigger write an if that tests presence of each picklist value and enters or leaves the call to relevant class. This wastes 1 query but you are sure that only the code you want will be called.
Each developer keeps on working in his own class file.
For integration test of both features simply set the multiselect to contain both features.
I found this trick especially useful when other guy's code turned out to be non-optimal and ate too many resources. I've just disabled his feature on my user account and kept on working.
This trick can be to some extend applied to Visualforce pages too (if you can divide them into components).
If you don't want to waste query - use some logic like "user's first name contains X" ;)
We had/have the exact same problem, we have a team of 10 Devs working on a force.com application that has loads of apex classes (>300) and VF pages (>300).
We started using Eclipse plugin but found it:
too slow working outside of the USA each time a save is called takes > 5 sections
to many merge issues with a team of 10 developers
Next we tried developing in our own individual sandboxes and then merging code. This is ok for a small project but when you have lots of files and need changes to be pushed between sandboxes it becomes impossible to manage as the only thing worse then force.com development tooling, is force.coms deployment/build tools. No automation its all manual. No easy way to move data between sandboxes either.
Our third approach was to just edit all our VF pages and Apex code in the browser. (not using their embedded editor that shows up in the bottom half of the page because that is buggy and slow) but just using the regular Editor under setup > develop > Apex classes. This worked ok. To supplement this we also had a scheduled job that would download all our code and save it into our SVN repository. We also built a tool that allow us to click a folder on our desktop and zip its contents and deploy it as static resources for us.
However this approach still has its short comings, i.e. it is slow and painful to develop in the cloud, their (salesforce) idea of Development As a Service is crazy. Also we have no real SCM we only have it acting as backups.
Bottom line is force.com is a CRM and not a Development platform, if you can? run, flee, get away from it as fast as you can. Using it for anything apart from a CRM is more trouble then it is worth. Even their Slogan "No Software" makes me laugh everytime
I'm not familiar with force.com, but couldn't you use source control and pull all the files down from force.com into your repository. Then you could all do your work, and merge your changes back into the mainline. Then whenever it's necessary push the mainline up to force.com?
Take a look at the "Development Lifecycle Guide: Enterprise Development on the Force.com Platform". You can find it on developer.force.com's documentation page.
You might want to consider working on separate static resources and pages and then just being careful when editing objects, classes etc.. If most of your development happens on client side code (page, staticresource, lightning component/app) you might be interested in this project: https://github.com/bvellacott/salesforce-build . In any case I strongly suggest using version control. If not on a server then at least locally on your machine, in case your peers overwrite your work.
I need to build a fairly simple app but it needs to work on both PC and Mac.
It also needs to be redistributable on a disc or usb drive as a standalone desktop app.
Initially I thought AIR would be perfect for this (it ticks all the API requirements), but the difficulty is making it distributable, as the app would require the AIR runtime to be installed to run.
I came across Shu Player as an option as it seems to be able to package the AIR runtime with the app and do a (silent?) install.
However this seems to break the T&C from Adobe (as outlined here) so I'm not sure about the legality.
Another option could be Zinc but I haven't tested it so I'm not sure how well it'll fit the bill.
What would you recommend or suggest I check out?
Any suggestion much appreciated
EDIT:
There's a few more discussions on mono usage (though no real conclusion):
Here and Here
EDIT2:
Titanium could also fit the bill maybe, will check it out.
Any more comments from anyone?
EDIT3 (one year on): It's actually been almost a year since I posted that question but it seems some people still come across it every now and then, and even contribute an answer, even a year later.
Thought I'd update the question a bit. I did not get around to try the tcl/tk option at the end, time constraint and the uncertainty of the compatibility to different os versions led me to discard that as an option.
I did try Titanium for a bit but though the first impressions were ok, they really are pushing the mobile platform more than anything, and imho, the desktop implementation suffers a bit from that lack of attention. There are also some report of problems with some visual studio runtime on some OSs (can't remember the details now though).. So discarded that too.
I ended up going with XULRunner. The two major appeals were:
Firefox seems to work out of the box on most OS version, so I took it as good faith that a XULRunner app would likely be compatible with most system. Saved me a lot of testing and it turned out that it did run really well on all platforms, there hasn't been a single report of not being able to start the app
It's Javascript baby! Language learning curve was minimal. The main thing to work out is what the additional xpcom interfaces are and how to query them.
On the down side:
I thought troubleshooting errors was a sometimes difficult task, the venkman debugger is kinda clunky, ended up using the console more than anything.
The sqlite interface is a great asset for a desktop app but I often struggled to find relevant error infos when something didn't work - maybe i was doing it wrong.
It took a little while to work out how to package the app as a standalone app for both PC and Mac. The final approach was to have a "shell" mac app and a shell pc app and a couple of "compile" script that would copy the shells and add the custom source code onto it in the correct location.
One last potential issue for some, due to the nature of xulrunner apps, your source code will be deployed with the app, you can use obfuscation if you want but that's something to keep in mind if you want to protect your intellectual property
All in all, great platform for a cross-platform app. I'd highly recommend it.
Tcl/Tk has one of the best packaging solutions out there. You can easily wrap a cross-platform application (implemented in a fully working virtual filesystem) with a platform-specific binary to get a single file executable for just about any modern desktop system. Search google for the terms starkit, starpack and tclkit. Such wrapped binaries are tiny in comparison to many executables these days.
Many deride Tk as being "old" or "immature" but it's one of the oldest, most stable toolkits out there. It uses native widgets when such widgets exist.
One significant drawback of Tcl/Tk, however, is that it lacks any sort of printing support. If your application needs to print you'll have to be a bit creative. There are platform-specific solutions, and the ability to generate postscript documents, and libraries to create pdfs, but it takes a little extra effort.
Java is probably your best bet, although not all Windows PCs will necessarily have Java (most should). JavaFX is new enough you can't count on it - you'll probably find a lot of machines running Java 1.5 or (shudder) 1.4. I believe recent Mac OS still ships with 1.5 (latest version may have changed to 1.6).
Consider JavaFX
It would run everywhere with a modern JRE ..!
AIR could be an option, but only if you don't mind distributing two different files (the offline runtime installer and your app), and expecting the user to run one and then the other. You do have to submit an online form at Adobe's site saying you agree to distribute the offline installer as-is, rather than digging out individual DLLs or whatever, before they give you the installer.
Unfortunately there's currently no way to get both an AIR app and the runtime to install from one file though. I'm not sure what the deal with Shu is, or whether it's doing anything that isn't kosher.
i would recommended zink. it has all the functionalities you require for desktop. however, the las time i used it it was a bit glitchy.
i was hung up by trying to write a 6M file to the disk. thought it trough and changed the code to write 512K chunks at a time (3min work, fast).
probably it still has some little annoying glitches like making you think on root lvl but the ease of use and the features are just way too sweet to ignore.
I use Intellij Idea 7 for Java dev. My dev is 'limited' to all J2SE features plus light JSP, Servlets, and super light usage of JPA. No J2EE, no massive use of random frameworks, etc.
Is it worth upgrading to ver 8? "Worth it" to me means better "core functionality" in terms of speed (ESPECIALLY startup speed), memory utilization (seems like it starts having serious problems with four or more projects open), and auto bug-finding.
More frameworks supported and more languages supported (other than perhaps Haskell and C++), and more refactorings don't interest me at this time.
A while back, I installed a preview version of 8 and it seemed -exactly- the same as 7, as far as my needs were concerned.
Anyone loving the upgrade to 8, and if so, why?
Thanks
It also seems to be easier to configure a new project over top of a complex collection of existing code.
For example, something that you would naturally configure into 5 or more modules.
There is a really beautiful go to/create test wizard that is bound to ctrl-shift-T. Worth the upgrade by itself
The best way to tell is to check out the list of new features and decide for yourself. I haven't discovered any single feature so far that by itself is worth upgrading - the simplified UML view is quite nice, as is the improved Maven integration. The UI feels a bit more streamlined and faster. It seems like most of the attention has gone into non-Java features like better Flex support (which I am really thankful for as I don't like FlexBuilder but I haven't had a chance to use yet).
IntelliJ 8 has a configure plugins feature that allows you to disable plugins with dependencies. Nothing trial and error couldn't replicate, but it is nice.
Startup is only marginally slower. But indexing once opened is a lot faster than before, even unnoticeable for most projects, except after a commit to Subversion. It seems a commit to subversion triggers the indexing twice.
I am working on the Diana-EAP build - but 8 has git integration built in. The EAP has better git integration than the 8.0.1 release - it looks like that is something they are really focusing on.
Definitely not! Seems that the variables defined in our custom taglibs are no longer able to be used in the jsp (worked in 7.0.4). All red. No auto complete.
Oh, and the new settings menu is horrendous!
Some benefits of IntelliJ IDEA 8:
IDEA 8 supports Subversion 1.5 new functionality - e.g. merge tracking, which may be useful especially if your team (like ours) uses a lot of development branches and thus merging is frequent.
One detail I appreciated about IDEA 8: As you probably know, IDEA has had changelists for pretty long now, built on top of any underlying version control system - this is a really useful feature. So, now that Subversion itself supports changeslists, IDEA's changelist implementation has been changed so that it is perfectly compatible with Subversion's native changeslists. (For example, you'll be able to work with any changelists created in IDEA also when using svn command line tools directly.)
Edit: in your case, perhaps it is not worthwhile to upgrade. For me, at least, startup and file indexing seems to be somewhat slower in 8 than 7. [But for me personally the upgrade was definitely worth it, because it solved a long-standing VCS problem with IDEA 7 - it could hang "waiting for VCS sync to finish" for an hour or whatever after hitting Ctrl-K.]