Bill Murray on storytelling

Bill Murray on storytelling http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PresentationZen/~3/m3EdWKUgJsY/bill-murray-on-storytelling.html

Sleep

The Power of Sleep http://time.com/3326565/the-power-of-sleep/?pcd=hp-magmod

Can't get no Rest An Oracle RESTful Service Consumed by Excel

I recently needed to get information from an Oracle Data Base into excel.  For those of you who have ever had the same need, you know that installing the proper Oracle client software and configuring it is a bit of a process

In this case I installed the Oracle Client for the 11i database that I was using
I configured the TNS Names entry for connection to the database on a remote server
I configured a ODBC source which gave  a successful test of connectivity

After all of this excel gave me an error when I tried and connected to this data source

This error tells you that you may have a 32 bit office client with a 64 bit OS in this case Windows 7.  Guilty as charged.  Suffice it to say -there must be a better way.  After a Restful sleep (I bet you see where this is going) I decided to utilize the ability of APEX 4.1 to publish a portion of a report as a Restful web service.

There are a few steps to making this happen

First you need a report page with some data so, I loaded the demo app into APEX

I set the page (2- Customers) in this case that had the report public so that no sign in would be required

You need to go into the administrator role and allow rest services

After all of this sets up the next step which is to allow the report region to be published.  I will shift over to page 4 - Orders to show what happens when you get things out of order.

This will allow the page 4 to be set to public, given a region id and set to Restful publishing

This final step is to test the rest service in your favorite browser and load it into Excel

my link is 

http://192.168.0.120:8888/apex/apex_rest.getReport?app=100&page=4&reportid=ord

the app 100 was assigned to the demo app when I loaded it

The page 4 is the orders page in the demo

the report id is the static id ord that I assigned and demo in the above video

Hooray - there is now Oracle data in Excel!

Summary
We have published (provided) a rest service in Oracle APEX 4.1 and consumed from a browser and excel. A pretty good days work!



Many thanks to
http://oracleapexideas.blogspot.com/2011/12/restful-access-of-report-in-oracle-apex.html
for describing the url setup

You cam also check out the official APEX documentation below:

Controlling RESTful Access

Use the Allow RESTful Access attribute to control whether developers can expose report regions as RESTful services.

See Also:

"Implementing Web Services" in Oracle Application Express Application Builder User's Guide

To enable RESTful Access:

1. Log in to Oracle Application Express Administration Services. See "Logging In To Oracle Application Express Administration Services".
2. Click Manage Instance.
3. Under Instance Settings, click Security.
4. Locate the RESTful Access section.
5. From Allow RESTful Access, select one of the following:
• Yes - Enables developers to expose report regions as RESTful services.
• No - Prevents developers from exposing report regions as RESTful services.
6. Click Apply Changes.

From <http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23903_01/doc/doc.41/e21678/adm_mg_service_set.htm#AEADM298

TimeTracking

Where does the time go?

i was doing some reading, browsing and all around research today a found an article on the ProjectLocker site.    This is a great place for people like me that have periodic needs to do something with Subversion or maintain a wiki for a project which the trac tool is great for.

See the page at: http://projectlocker.com/integrations/time-trackexcerpters/   This article identifies 3 trackers.  Here is an excerpt

ProjectLocker seamlessly integrates with your time tracker

ProjectLocker has built-in integrations to several popular time trackers. These integrations let you log time when you commit to your Subversion or Git repositories. Best of all, you can log time from the Subversion or Git client you use now.

Enter hours worked in commit messages and automatically log time to a Freckle project.

Enter time worked in commit messages and automatically submit time to a Toggl project.

Enter time worked in commit messages and automatically submit time to a Harvest project.

All logos and brands presented herein are trademarks of their respective owners.

After looking at each of these solutions, I settled on toggl.  The primary reason is that there is afree versio that I can try and there is integration with Freshbooks which is a plus
There is an android app and a Chrome Browser App
I have always known that better use of time begins with taking stock of what you are spending time on.  I plan to use toggl to establish a baseline of where all that time goes and maybe do a bit of fine tuning

Microsoft Excel embedded

This is a test post

I am working with the excel embed feature from onedrive

White House suspends some fed IT project funding

White House suspends some fed IT project funding

Take Me out to the Ballgame

I went to a Colorado Rockies game last night.  A warm spring evening in Coors stadium is a great way to celebrate the coming of Summer in the Rockies. 

Some time between the first pitch and the expected Home Run by number 99 Manny Ramirez that sealed the game for the Dodgers, I noticed that there was a lot going on outside of the game.  I remember going to a game in Toronto several years ago where it was noted that the first digital cell phone (PCS as it was called at the time) call was made.  It seemed to usher in a new world where you could talk to anyone when you wanted to.

There were a few people making miscellaneous calls from the seats around us in the left field bleachers, but most of the activities were taking place with people supplementing conversations with periodic texting.  It takes some getting used to, but clearly people outside of the game experience were either involved remotely or other topics were being worked out over the text message network from the stands.

As more of the stadiums’ namesake was consumed, the fans grew louder and more emotional.  Although not enough to change the outcome of the came, participation came in a lot of shapes and sizes.  There was some relationship building taking place before our eyes as well as perhaps some minor embarrassing moments that would be pointed out later since they were captured on the ever present camera’s that accompany most all of the texting devices in use around us.

As my son and I left the stadium and headed for the light rail, the area around the stadium transitioned from those leaving town to those arriving.  With late night act ivies being nudged into place via some very quick thumbs, people were connecting with communities in person, close by, and perhaps sometimes in other states, or even countries.

While the sporting event was fun, for many it was only a stop along a more connected lifestyle that tries to balance being there and connecting with those who are not