I officially started my career as an Oracle DBA in 2001, but my path to that role spans two previous decades of working on so many different projects, organizations, and teams that I’ve often forgotten what it was like to be an applications developer. I still remember the thrill I got the first time I wrote a SQL statement and actually got back a meaningful result; I recall the first time that I successfully built a new PowerBuilder application that pulled data right out of an Oracle database gave me a similar jolt of joy.
I recently returned to my application development roots when I decided to build a new set of applications using Oracle Application Express (APEX), and I used my experiences this past summer as a volunteer for a US Congressional campaign to construct a series of use cases and requirements for a mobile, flexible, responsive application for voter canvassing. Now thanks to my editors and colleagues at IOUG, I’ve had the opportunity to chronicle those experiences from my perspective as an “old-school” Oracle DBA with a new article series entitled A DBA’s Journey to APEX. So far that journey has three parts:
- Part 1: From Napkin to Application In a Single Weekend explains how I constructed the original specifications and data model and built the original database schema for the application.
- Part 2: If We Build It, the Voters Will Come chronicles my introduction to setting up an APEX workspace and building the first rough draft of the corresponding application components.
- Part 3: Give Them a Lever, and They Will Move the World explains how I delved more deeply into APEX’s reporting and data entry capabilities, including the development of a mobile application for voter canvassing.
All content is free courtesy of Quest Oracle Community. I hope you get as much out of reading them as I did out of writing them. Happy computing!
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