Mnemonics for Oracle SQL, PL/SQL & Apex

A collection of notes, ideas, solutions, bug fixes, best practices, thoughts and reminders, related to Oracle SQL, PL/SQL & Application Express (Apex).
I couldn't resist putting in some hobbies as well.
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IT became a hobby of mine around 1980, and turned into a profession in 1994. Oracle came into view around 2000.
Over the years I have worked on various Oracle related projects all over the world, and am currently employed by Itium.
Contact me at .

• 2024-06-20: I updated the site to Apex 24.1 and that went just fine - up until the point I found a new feature/bug and I had to roll back the whole thing.
  Turns out that in Apex 24.1 the Application Export has a new feature "Audit Information":
  Specify the Audit Information to include in the export file. Audit information includes the Created By User, Created On Date, Changed By User and Changed On Date.
  - By default, no audit information is included.
  - Choose Names and Dates to include all audit information.
  - Choose Dates Only to include date information and exclude user details.
  
  Because by default "no audit information is included", it is also not included in the backups I make using SQLcl. And as far as I can tell, SQLcl does not have an option (yet) to overrule this option. I need the "Last Update" date, both for use on Page 1 of this site, and also in the Builder for my own reference.
  So for now I have created a table and a database job to make a backup of these dates, just in case this bug is never fixed (or returns in the future). Not very elegant (and it will still mean the Builder shows wrong dates after importing a SQLcl export) but at least it works for Page 1.

Intel NUC D34010WYK

• Proxmox VE 8.2
• Container (LXC) with 2 CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 40 GB disk and AlmaLinux 9
• Oracle Database 23ai Free Release 23.0.0.0.0 - Version 23.4.0.24.05
• Apex 24.1.2 (patch 2)
• ORDS 24.1.1.r1201228
• Tomcat 9.0.89

September 2022
Time for something new: I bought a secondhand Intel NUC D34010WYK with a 250GB SSD, installed Proxmox 7.2, and moved the site to a container (LXC) with AlmaLinux on that setup. The Apache proxy server got the same treatment.
The Dell server was still working perfectly, but with the energy prices at the moment, the 50 Watts the Dell uses on average makes it an expensive option. The NUC uses just a few Watts, so that should pay for itself in less than a year.
I did try to install VMware ESXi 6.7 on the NUC and it works just fine, but it seems VMware is not too keen on this old version anymore. The 6.7 info is hard to find these days, and I could not get a second license from the site - it kept throwing errors. Too bad, but I wanted to try Proxmox anyway, so no problem.

October 2021
I moved this website back to my VMware ESXi server, after running for about 18 months on a VPS at OVH.com. That VPS worked fine, but VMs on my own server make things more flexible, and the site performs better as well.
I also changed the OS (from CentOS to Oracle Linux), and updated the XE database, Apex, ORDS and Tomcat, so it''s all brand new and shiny.
More info on my setup: database VM on VMware ESXi, and a reverse Apache proxy VM handling SSL.