Blog

I’ll be providing this part 2 of our Collaborate19 Recap with my friend and colleague Christopher Jackson, our Director of Business Development.  I’ll begin with my take on the event. I’ve started to feel like I’m a (young) veteran at this Collaborate conference. It’s an enjoyable feeling too!  I’m not […]

Once again this year we had the privilege to present at Collaborate, the highly popular technology and applications forum brought to you by the people at IOUG, OATUG, and Quest Oracle Community. And what a stimulating gathering of functional and technical Oracle practitioners, experts and vendors it was again this […]

What is a ‘productivity cube’, you ask? It’s a physical device that you manually rotate to mark your changing tasks, thereby elegantly tracking your time. We built such a device for the Insum 2019 Hackathon The concept is best understood in action: https://www.youtube.com/embed/OtSPYfJLQBE   To be clear, this product is […]

In my last blog, I talked about how you can to greatly improve E-business Suite’s User Interfaces with software customizations (I also provided some nice examples). Using Oracle APEX, the Oracle-built and supported application development platform, you can provide your E-Business Suite users with modern, intuitive applications while you enhance […]

In less than a week’s time, Insum is heading out to Collaborate19 in San Antonio, Texas. Collaborate is an intense 5 days of networking for Oracle technology users, product development people, and consultants.  Whether you are administering E-Business Suite, or using other Oracle technology, the event is a unique in-person […]

Just as we were about to publish this Power Ranking we received official news from Oracle on the General Availability of Oracle APEX 19.1! There were a few moves within the rankings but most importantly REST-Enabled Forms actually strengthened its grip on the top spot. Where does your favorite APEX [...]

In the middle of #InsumHack19 on a sunny Saturday afternoon, with hackathon teams feverishly working around us and a Monday noon deadline drawing closer, we sat down with Martin D’Souza, Oracle ACE Director and Director of Innovation at Insum. We talked about Insum’s hackathon evolution and the reasons behind this […]

It’s almost time for our annual Hackathon and in preparation for this year’s #Insumhack19, we caught up with Trent Schafer (may or may not be the guy in the photo), the captain of last year’s winning Hackathon team. We sat down for an interview and a little inspiration for our […]

Docker is a popular software delivery platform that packages and runs applications in “containers”. These containers have the necessary software dependencies pre-installed, run within an isolated operating system environment, and can be deployed on any host system where the Docker Engine can run. Typically, developers “pull” images from a Docker […]

When configuration changes are made to an ERP system, the focus is on making business processes execute properly so that business needs are satisfied accordingly. But, there is always a needed change or enhancement that an ERP cannot accommodate. Software customizations can address these unanswered needs. Fortunately, E-Business Suite users […]

Last year about this time we began a blog series power ranking the upcoming features associated with Application Express 18.1. The response was overwhelming. Mike Hichwa even admitted within the halls of Oracle the monthly power rankings provided bragging rights among the APEX Dev Team. With Application Express 19.1 New [...]

In my previous blog, the first of four in this series, I explained how Oracle APEX, Oracle’s Rapid Application Development (RAD) platform allows you to improve the E-Business Suite (EBS) business processes you and your users find inefficient. Because APEX is a RAD platform, it can help you do this […]

While starting off this new year (It's still January, isn't it?), I wanted to take the opportunity to offer you, our readers, my best wishes for 2019. Thanks for your interest in our work, your questions, and the conversations. I also wanted to give you a summary of the year [...]

Oracle E-Business Suite is the Enterprise Resource Planning system of choice for thousands of businesses. A well-rounded Oracle product, it performs just about every business function a medium to large business could require, and is notable for its strong procurement, accounts receivable, accounts payable, as well as MRP and inventory […]

Since its appearance in 2006, Cloud computing has been one of the most talked about subjects in IT. Just about everyone is now aware that adopting the Cloud can offer advantages such as cost savings and flexibility. However, the Cloud comes in many different forms and frankly, can be confusing [...]

Jean Michel Lafrance (left, guy with beard) and Maxime Pelletier (right, guy with beard) are Insum’s latest interns. As they are now nearing the end of their internship, we decided to sit down with them and get their take on the past 3 months they’ve spent at our Montreal Offices. [...]

Although Oracle Forms applications offer their end-users a web-browser interface, they aren't particularly web-friendly.  Indeed, most Forms developers will tell you that the Oracle Forms development platform is simply not suited for building web-based applications. And, as Forms applications still play a vital role in many companies, this has become [...]

Oracle SQL Developer is a much-appreciated tool for designing, building, documenting, managing and enhancing software systems. It’s also good for testing databases and deploying/administering Oracle Rest Data Services (ORDS). It's useful for APEX developers, too. It allows them to browse, import or export applications or pages, as well as modify [...]

This blog topic was inspired by Connor McDonald’s excellent YouTube video ‘Rock solid secure database connections’, in which he discusses 3 methods to stop exposing your passwords in your database connection strings: In the spirit of continuing the conversation, I'll contribute my $0.02 to his 3 methods. Also, I'll contribute [...]

In my previous blog (2 of 4 in this series) I explained how similar the web-based development platform called Oracle APEX is to Oracle Forms. These similarities give your Forms developers the confidence and efficiency that come with working in familiar territory.  This brings me to the business advantages of modernizing Oracle Forms […]

A PWA (Progressive Web App) is essentially a website that can act very much as an app does on a mobile phone or tablet. This is beyond simple responsive design, a technology that’s been almost universally adopted these past few years. Whereas responsive design adjusts the same information (desktop page) for [...]

In any company, one of IT’s primary responsibilities is to continually increase the profitability of the organization’s information. In that perspective, IT innovation is vital to the company’s future. Innovation is necessary for survival, and sometimes, custom software development is the fastest way to achieve what’s necessary. ERPs can’t do [...]

In this second installment of my series on Oracle Forms and Reports, I’ll explain why Oracle APEX is ideally suited for Forms Modernization (My first blog was about Forms Challenges). APEX is a web-based Rapid Application Development tool that comes with the Oracle Database. If you already run an Oracle […]

Oracle OpenWorld18 is nigh. This year Insum’s own, Francis Mignault and I will be in attendance. We are looking forward to meeting with the Oracle Product Development teams, our wonderful partners and most importantly clients and potential clients. Still with tens of thousands of people in attendance it can be […]

What’s the optimal technical solution for sending do-not-reply / marketing / notification / batch emails? Is it wiser to in-house or outsource the service? What are my options if I’m considering outsourcing? These questions are difficult and I don’t propose to answer any of them with much thoroughness. They are, […]

Background I recently did multiple upgrades on my Mac: the O/S to High Sierra, SQL Developer to 18.1, and then the JDK to bring it up to a level that SQL Dev requires. Naturally, I updated to the latest JDK, which is higher than SQL Dev 18.1 supports, but hey, [...]

This post kicks off a four-part series of blogs dedicated to Oracle Forms and Reports Modernization. If your company still uses Forms applications, is looking to modernize them, but have not yet found a realistic and reliable solution, then this blog series will be well worth your time.   Forms and [...]

We sometimes get questions about REST. “What is it exactly?” “How does it work?”. In its long form, "Representational State Transfer" doesn't make it easier to understand. Nor do the words usually associated with it, such as in “Should I have a REST API?” or “Should I have RESTful Services?”. And, [...]

Lack of time, lack of knowledge and too many preconceptions can hold back your business, especially when it comes to its technological evolution. Where does this problem come from? How can you solve it? Start by seeking out the facts.   These days, it’s getting harder to rely on newspapers, […]

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a complex combination of website qualities that combine to improve the site’s ranking by search engines. As we all should hope, the most important factor is content. The goal of search engines is to display the most relevant, compelling and current content to users. Accordingly, […]

Web services are an efficient means of providing access to web resources to a variety of clients. This access can be provided regardless of the client by relying on a standardized architecture to ensure interoperability and predictable behavior. REST Currently, REST, or Representational State Transfer, is the most popular of […]

When it comes to extending applications in the Oracle E-Business Suite Environment, EBS Developers and their managers have been presented with some difficult options over the years. To understand where they are coming from, you must go back to the beginnings of EBS Development. Forms Development in E-Business Suite EBS […]

ICYMI (in case you missed it), Oracle is having a special live webcast on July 16, 2018. After several false expectations from the media, Oracle’s finally (probably) announcing the general availability of the Autonomous Blockchain service. I have been longing for the day! At Kscope18, I had the honour of […]

Kscope 2018 was held in Orlando, Fl. from June 10 to June 14  Seeing as only a fraction of the total APEX community can actually attend in person, it becomes necessary to report back and to provide our take, our opinions of the week that was KScope. This is also good information […]

FINALLY! After months of anticipation, Oracle Application Express (APEX) version 18.1 has arrived! Taking a look at the new features included definitely makes it appear it’s been worth the wait. There really is something for everyone. Where does your favorite APEX 18.1 feature rank? Biggest Mover Up:  New Create App Wizard […]

If you’re just starting out in Oracle Application Express, know that Dynamic Actions can take your applications from basic to awesome very quickly. And, just like a lot of things in APEX, they aren’t that hard to learn or implement. So, What Do They Do? In a nutshell, Dynamic Actions […]

The ability to work collaboratively as a team is certainly one of the wonderful aspects of Application Express, Oracle’s rapid application development platform. Developers work on a shared server and update their changes in real time.

The Story of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) is now playing out at the frontier of two worlds, inside your smartphone. Once upon a time, inside your smartphone,  the worlds of Web browsers and mobile apps were very different. It never really bothered you. It was just like that, and you went […]

Blockchain is a technology buzzword getting a lot of attention these days. At its core, this technology is a means for securing data in a distributed database. The data is de-centralized as opposed to all together in one place such as in a traditional database structure. Its design makes it […]

This year at Kscope18, Insum will dish out no less than 16 Oracle APEX-related presentations in only 3 days. Every one of them is designed to capture your developer’s imagination and feed you practical information and guidelines throughout your discovery of the many facets of this powerful Rapid Application Development tool. what’s […]

It’s time for the Insum Collaborate18 wrap-up Our APEX experts were at OAUG’s premiere event from April 22nd to April 28th. According to all present it was, in many ways, our most successful Collaborate participation yet, garnering more interest in Oracle APEX than we’d seen in previous years. To everyone’s […]

On April 17th, 2018, the City of Montreal honored Insum with the Abe-Limonchik intercultural award.  This distinction recognizes “exceptional contribution to intercultural relations and the promotion of diversity”. The evaluation criteria for this unique award are as follows: The distinct, innovative and exemplary nature of the practices put in place […]

It’s quiet. Too quiet. And while I have no official word from Oracle, something tells me we’re getting close to announcing 18.1 as being generally available.

Many companies are now planning some kind of migration to the cloud for their Enterprise Resource Planning systems. This is because there are many advantages to getting your ERP on a Cloud infrastructure.

Extended support for Oracle Discoverer ended over a year and a half ago, in June 2017. Enterprises using this once premier ad hoc reporting software are hearing the clock tick louder than ever. This is because, without further upgrades or support, Discoverer could become prey to bugs, end up incompatible […]

It's tough for companies with Oracle Forms. They are often told they should replace this 30-year-old application development technology. But then, Oracle will tell you that the latest version of  Forms will easily integrate with almost any modern technology your enterprise requires. So where does that leave you? Oracle Forms [...]

These quickly digestible tips are to help you appreciate what a fabulous front-end development tool APEX Nitro is for Oracle Application Express (APEX), which is, of course, an awesome Rapid Application Development tool for Oracle Database users.

Spring is here and Collaborate18 is coming soon. Spring, for those who have winter, is the season where you can’t wait for that melting snow to be totally gone and start enjoying your favorite summer activities.  Getting to your BBQ without having to walk through 3 feet of snow (or […]

InsumHack18, our 3rd annual Hackathon was both the most challenging and the most rewarding to date. Teams had to develop an application for the Amazon Echo, as well as work with its personal assistant, Alexa. The entries were varied and each of them, rich in possibilities. A significant portion of the points […]

As of March 12, we now know rather than 5.2, the new version of APEX will be 18.1. March 12th also gave us Early Adopter 2 along with eight new enhancements. Where does your favorite APEX 18.1 feature rank? Biggest Mover Up: Oracle JET and jQuery Upgrades [ +2 ] Biggest […]

In the middle of Insum’s 2018 Hackathon, we spoke to Martin D’Souza, Innovation Director at Insum. Martin explained the guiding principles behind Insum’s Annual Hackathon and how he and the InsumHack18 teams have experienced this year’s theme, Alexa.

Is it possible that in this day and age, at an Ivy League University, an internal process can consist of a combination of Excel spreadsheets, paper forms, emails, and bits of SQL script? The short answer is yes. And, this kind of situation is more widespread than you may think. […]

So you have decided that you want to use Oracle Application Express (APEX) to build secure and scalable web-based software applications on top of an Oracle database. Cool. So, now what? How do you get your development team up and running on this highly productive and versatile platform? Insum’s APEX developer […]

As in many other industries, there is a gender gap in IT. One look at the workforce will tell you that women in tech are underrepresented. Yet, according to the World Economic Forum, closing this gender gap is urgent and essential to ensure competitiveness and future-readiness in companies across the […]

Oracle Application Express (APEX) boasts hundreds of plugins, dozens of talented bloggers, and a thriving help forum. We’d like to release a tool that will help grow the community even further! Introducing Insum-APEX-Pro: A chrome extension that adds extra functionality to APEX Page Designer. To install, open this link and […]

On June 25th, 2017 at the ODTUG KScope general session in San Antonio, Vincent Morneau a long-time Insum employee was presented with the ODTUG innovation award for his development of an application called APEX Nitro. APEX Nitro streamlines the use of HTML, JavaScript and CSS when Programming within Oracle Application Express.  […]

New month. New leader. All in all some twelve features changed positions. Where does your favorite APEX 5.2 feature rank? Biggest Mover Up: REST Enabled SQL Support [ +4 ] Biggest Mover Down: New Create App Wizard [ -2 ] Previous Rankings: January 2018 Editor’s note: Each month, we’ll power rank […]

Funny to say it now, in the middle of February 2018, but happy anniversary Insum! It had actually been 15 years in 2017. Happy belated birthday? No, not really, since we had the anniversary cake and all, but I’ve only just now had some time to myself to sit down […]

Recently I was working on a project that relied heavily on location data. It required entering addresses, over and over again. Country, state, street address, city, zip code, etc… I was thinking that there must be a better way. Turns out there is: Google Autocomplete! I am sure you have […]

Oracle APEX 5.2  may be considered a minor release, but it promises major functionality enhancements.  Which of these will move the needle? Each month, we’ll power rank the rumored enhancements ahead of Oracle APEX 5.2’s GA release. We’ll take the pulse of the APEX community, monitoring comments, talking to you all […]

The Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0 (SAML2) is an XML-based markup language and an open standard for identity and service providers to communicate authentication and authorization information.

OpenWorld17 is but a few days away. If you haven’t built your agenda, here are some suggestions

For those first-timers it can be daunting and overwhelming. Read on and find out how to survive your first OpenWorld.

What Do Breadboards, Lego-Style Innovation, and Oracle APEX Have in Common? Oracle APEX is purposely built for “combining components” to build solutions.

How DBAs Can Boost (or Kill) Innovation – when DBAs promote and encourage the use of high-productivity tools, innovation can flourish. When they don’t, it suffers.

Oracle APEX Version Control – Mitigate APEX’s version control constraints by using good development practices that work well with APEX.

Learn more about extending Oracle EBS with Oracle APEX with some of our experts at COLLABORATE 17.

Oracle APEX: Low Code, High Innovation – biggest benefit of low code platforms is increasing the number people who can delivering technical solutions.

Understand and master how to use slashes and semicolons in Oracle DDL Scripts. Terminate your SQL and PL/SQL statements properly.

Learn how to integrate statistical calculations or machine learning algorithms in your Oracle APEX application with R functions.

We’ve developed an EBS & APEX Up and Running Package designed specifically to help you quickly get started with developing EBS extensions using APEX.

Our top Oracle APEX minds highlight their favourite new features (IG, Theme Roller, new APIs) and share why you should upgrade to Oracle APEX 5.1.

Alliance – Higher Education Oracle Conference – Valdosta State uses Oracle APEX for enterprise-level applications with thousands of daily users.

HEUG Alliance – Higher Education Oracle Conference – UC Berkeley shares the benefits of integrating Oracle APEX into an OBIEE dashboard.

Having done multiple conversions from Oracle Forms to Oracle APEX, I will answer questions that you should be asking before starting this project.

Making Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) a friendlier tool for consumers, designers, modelers and analysts with Oracle APEX.

Every software project carries some technical debt, however, Oracle APEX can minimize that initial debt load. Learn about how APEX helps you do so.

With Oracle APEX 5.0, you can pivot data within an Interactive Report and it’s quite easy. To accomplish this, go to Actions / Format / Pivot.

Using a modern application framework like Oracle APEX allows organizations to create Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) extensions like never before.

Our Oracle APEX methodology is composed of different elements related to all aspects of an APEX development project from architecture to project management.

Here are five common tasks that should be familiar with Discoverer users and explains how those same tasks are performed using Oracle APEX Interactive Reports.

Insum Solutions – Oracle APEX Printing Options. Decide between BI Publisher, JasperReports, PL/PDF, ORDS and APEX Office Print.

As part of our no-code to low-code show at the recent Oracle Developer Day Vancouver, we created a demo Oracle APEX application that uses both historical and live Open511 data from DriveBC. The application also allows any resident in the city to contribute events using any device.

If your organization is overly-dependant on spreadsheets, Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a free, fully supported, “no-code” solution that allows anyone to create a beautiful application that is multi-user, secure and mobile-ready.

On October 27th, we hosted a Vancouver Oracle Developer Day in conjunction with the BC Oracle Users Group (BCOUG) and ODTUG.

When someone asks if an Oracle APEX application is secure, here are some of the aspects to that question that should probably be addressed.

For many users, new business requirements demand new solutions, and while Oracle Forms does a lot of things well, “new” isn’t really one of them.

There are a multitude of options available to replace the functionality of Discoverer, both from Oracle and third party vendors.

Oracle Forms and Reports has some significant limitations, especially when it comes to the user experience. Is it time to modernize?

Oracle APEX 5.0 is faster than 4.2; development in APEX 5.0 takes less time. Oracle APEX 5.0 looks better. You will stay supported.

Looking for options to extend EBS? We’ve compiled the top 5 reasons why organizations choose Oracle APEX when they need to build EBS Extensions

We hosted a Oracle APEX hackathon. Participants were encouraged to use new technology and solve a business problem in 48 hours.

Heading to Oracle Open World? Check out these APEX sessions!

We dive into Security, Users/Developer Accounts, IDs and Interactive Reports, and RESTful Services.

An application Item, a page 0 item, or a substitution string? This workflow will help you determine which Oracle APEX Global Items to use.

With low-cost viewers and a VR framework, developers can easily create a ground-breaking experience for their APEX applications.

This article will cover how to automatically export and import Oracle APEX applications via scripts rather than a manual process.

Before we finally close the book on this year’s conference, we’d like to share some of our personal highlights.

My Hackathon team included Jason Aughenbaugh and Adrian Png, and we decided to bring Visio-like capabilities to an APEX application. The sample application we developed over those two days demonstrated a process flow one would normally document using Visio.

You won’t have to look far to find Insum Solutions at KScope 16. President, Michel St. Amour, leads our largest contingent ever.

I took a stab at building a session list I feel would have particular appeal to someone looking at APEX for the first time, or someone without much experience with the tool.

We’ve got something for the seasoned APEX developers among us.

The user experience during data entry can be improved by auto selecting the content of a text field before the user starts typing.

I still remember the first time I used Oracle APEX (HTMLDB) in 2004.

APEX is no-cost option to the database; it’s already included. APEX truly facilitates rapid application development.

2-speed IT is about reconciling the different technology goals between business units who want to focus on iterative innovation with rapid application evolution, and IT departments who are accountable for maintaining enterprise class SLAs and understandably want to focus on stability and reliability.

1. What is APEX? Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a Rapid Application Development framework for the Oracle database – rapid should be stressed. With basic SQL and PL/SQL skills, you can quickly create applications that add real value for businesses.