With many widely used, essential features in Oracle APEX’s SQL Workshop such as SQL Command and the Object Browser, there are as many if not more underused features especially in the Utilities section of the workshop. The ones I will be covering in this blog will be the Data Generator, Query Builder and Quick SQL. Data generator Data Generator is a useful tool when you need to produce a large amount of randomly generated test data for tables in your apps. They work by creati

What is harvest now, decrypt later? Whether it be your ISP, someone on the same network as you, or even someone that works at a chokepoint (like an undersea cable or hub, or aforementioned ISP), there’s many people that can read your internet traffic; which is why the SSL and TLS standards were invented: to prevent bad actors from reading your data. This dictates everything from HTTPS traffic, including bank transactions, to most VPNs – so even traffic routed privately betwee

Intro Some people hate JavaScript, but I love it! Some people hate the way they inherit non-sensical looking JS they can't make head nor tail of: for me, that's part of the challenge of being a dev. PL/SQL can be great too, but it's also a bit staid, wouldn't you say? A bit set in its ways. Brilliant at what it does, of course, but all a bit same-y. Geek alert! I've read the Rhino^ book three (3!) times. 4th edition, back in the early 2000s when it was more of a fledgling lan

By default when deploying an Oracle database on RDS (and many other cloud providers, including on-prem), connections are made with Native Network Encryption (NNE). NNE is a great start, as it encrypts Oracle Net traffic in transit and helps protect it from being intercepted or modified on the network. However, unlike TLS, NNE does not use X.509 certificates to establish the identity of the database server through a Certificate Authority (CA). As a result, encryption alone doe

Anyone who has spent an afternoon chasing multiple 4xx connection errors across a maze of security groups, route tables and NACLs knows how painful network troubleshooting on AWS can be. A single missing route or an overly restrictive security group rule can be nearly impossible to spot by eye, especially in a VPC with multiple different traffic routes. AWS Reachability Analyzer was built to solve, or at least to make you aware of gaps in connections between resources. Will b

Using AI is easy; Understanding usage is not. AI has become an integral part of many organisations’ internal tools and workflows. Most developers are well versed in using Agents, Subagents and tools for tasks like code generation, review, planning, and documentation. What they may not be as well versed in is how efficient their usage is, or could be. Recently, some Codex users have reported their usage limits being consumed dramatically faster than expected. Combined with ra

The power and uptake of AI has crossed a threshold, its capabilities and implementations are no longer constrained by what your model can do; the discussion is now what the model should do, and how you can trust it. The challenges are no longer about models being accurate, they are now about how you can validate that accuracy. This has moved many organisations' concerns and controls from their models' ability to complete tasks to how they should complete them, how they should

Most people have heard of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and, on a high level, most people can explain why one may be used. VPNs have become increasingly popular over the years, allowing users to hide browsing activity, their location and protect their personal data. More specifically, they can allow users to access resources that may only be available in specific locations (if you are from the UK, for example, but on holiday in Australia, and want to watch a BBC TV programme

When you export your objects for a SQLcl project framework, you'll have spotted the long list of settings in the format file (project.sqlformat.xml). The names aren't always obvious, and they don't map neatly onto what you actually see in SQL Developer's Advanced Format panel, so working out what each one does tends to be a bit of trial and error. This is based on my own testing, some of these settings are barely documented, and behaviour can shift between versions. If you sp

With the launch of 26.1, Oracle added a lot of exciting new features to APEX that you can read about in our blog post. At RADAPEX we have been getting to grips with the new features and exploring how they have changed the way we work with and build applications. One feature that was a bit more obscure than the others was the new Data Reporter. During the launch of 26.1 and soon after there were a lot of questions around this feature; how does it interact with your application

In this blog, we will be looking at some major jumps in the learning journey for a piece of software/technology and the challenges at each stage, and more importantly, some techniques to help combat this and improve your professional development. Firstly, some background on me; I recently joined RADAPEX as a DevOps Engineer at the start of June (shameless LinkedIn post plug!). After being out of the tech industry for a little over a year brought back the feelings of my first

Introduction Recently, we were handed an application feature requirement for users to be able to search across approximately 150 different columns distributed across 14 different tables. While this initially sounded like an everyday SQL task easily solved with standard relational queries, it quickly morphed into an architectural challenge. What started as a straightforward feature request rapidly evolved into a complex data engineering puzzle, forcing us to abandon basic SQL

What is a white paper? A white paper is an in-depth report or guide that informs readers about a specific topic, problem or area of research. A strong white paper explains the causes of a problem, explores possible solutions and helps the reader understand the subject in greater detail. Unlike a blog post, a white paper is not designed to be light, quick or entertaining. Its purpose is to educate, inform and provide evidence-based insight. Why write a white paper? White paper

Introduction The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Foundation is a non-profit organisation dedicated to increasing the security of global software through community-led open-source software projects. The OWASP Top 10 is a regularly updated awareness document on the 10 most critical application security vulnerabilities. OWASP uses many criteria to assess the top 10, including but not limited to: exploitability, detectability, prevalence, and technical impact.

No more DUAL! 23c+ Like many other databases, you can now simply enter: SELECT USER, SYSDATE; Thank you Oracle! There’s more?! You betcha! INSERT-SET, 23.9+ I’ve always been frustrated by the disconnect in syntax between INSERT and UPDATE, much preferring the latter’s 1-to-1 association between column-name and value: UPDATE <table> SET COL1 = :val1 , COL2 = :val2; Clearly, COL1 receives the value from :val1, etc. But with INSERT, of course it’s: INSERT INTO <tbl> ( ... ,

Why Should I Implement a Pipeline? Agile development can be a fast-paced environment; it is crucial that deployments are reliable and executed with confidence. Most steps of the deployment and testing process require manual work, which can often be overlooked or forgotten about, especially when it comes to large, complex Oracle APEX applications. Regression testing is often carried out after a deployment has already taken place. This presents a key issue; customers are blind

It has been just over a year since I started at RADAPEX as a Digital and Technology Solutions Apprentice and I thought it would be a nice idea to document all the knowledge and experience I have gained throughout my time here. In this blog I’ll cover both the things I have learnt in the workplace, as well as each of the four modules I have taken in my first year at Leeds Beckett University. Background Before I begin, I would like to tell you a bit about myself; I graduated co

As AI creeps further and further into our everyday lives, it is vital for us to be able to harness it effectively, efficiently and consistently. Enter context engineering - the (maybe) magic bullet to streamlining AI integration in your business. What is context engineering? Context engineering is the idea of designing an information system around an AI model such as designing effective prompts, defining information sources, external tools, managing context windows and much m

Recently, we found ourselves working on a data migration project that required not only moving data, but transforming it based on complex conditions and external inputs. That’s when we turned to an often-overlooked feature of Oracle SQL: the WITH FUNCTION clause. This small but powerful bit of syntax made the task significantly easier and, just as importantly, kept our migration scripts clean, readable, and maintainable, without any temporary objects needing to be installed.

I've had a play around with a really simple APEX Workflow: Here are some points to bear in mind when working with one: Workflows and Tasks run in background scheduler jobs with no APEX session. You cannot therefore use eg. :APP_USER in static values, say, as a variable. You would need to pass :APP_USER in as a parameter to the workflow from the page process. If you want to run something in a scheduler job for doing something with a workflow, you need to call apex_session.crea