Apex? Whhaaaaaat?
Although it may be somewhat hard to believe, in fact yr. obt. svt. has technology interests outside of EPM many of which – like what would it take to really build that fusion reactor in my back shed – are likely best left unexplored.
What is best explored is an exploration of what else Kscope16 has on offer. As most everyone knows, my quite-a-bit-smarter-not-at-all-genetically-or-familially-related-but-somehow-confused-for-me-brother Martin D’Souza, is Mr. Apex. Although explaining Apex to me required Martin to exercise patience and lots of really small words, I now have an appreciation for Application Express aka Apex. For those of you as clueless as I (so, exactly no one but bear with me regardless), it took a while for the penny to drop: Apex’s concept of a relational back end and programmatically generated web code is what builds practically all of the web sites you visit except maybe ones like this.
Good grief I – and I’ll bet you – spend a lot of time on the web: message boards, technical documentation, user group portals, really cool upcoming conferences, this idiotic web site. Given that just about all of the EPM products are web based, and are becoming even more so over time, and are in fact conceptually Apex-like, it occurred to me that I ought to actually try to understand what’s going on under the hood. This is a block for hackers, right? And what better conference than Kscope16 for understanding that?
And with that…
Paranoia
Data breaches are everywhere on the web. Everywhere. It’s nice to know that Kscope developers get it in the form of defensive measures. I suppose they’re exercising their inner paranoia which nicely matches with mine.
Security from Tim Austin
APEX Security: Discussing Real-World Security Risks, Jun 28, 2016, Session 10, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
APEX Security: Anatomy of a Cross-Site Scripting Attack, Jun 29, 2016, Session 18, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
I think, I hope, I pray that attending Tim’s sessions on real world security makes the paranoia go away. I hope.
Internet of Things
Will EPM ever be part of IoT? I am not holding my breath. For those of us who are not terminally dull, Anton Nielsen is running a lab on just that (IoT, not being terminally boring as I am the world domain lead for that) via his Hands-On Training: Build Something! IOT = Internet + Oracle + Things lab on Jun 27, 2016, Traditional HOT 3, 2:00 pm - 4:15 pm.
My code never sucks. Never. Never. Ever.
How does that go? Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations, never change your story. When things go tits up, obviously someone else buggered up the code. And Peter Raganitsch agrees. Ah, I just read his summary more closely so that isn’t strictly true: he’ll be talking about how to find the bugs, not shift the blame. Where’s the fun in that as blame shifting is my modus operandi. Given that I am kidding it behooves me to attend his It Wasn't Me: Finding Bugs in APEX Applications session on Jun 28, 2016, Session 12, 4:45 pm - 5:45 pm because sooner or later someone else is going to figure out my code stinks.
Why is Apex doing so well?
Apex is cool. EPM? You decide. Perhaps we can crib a page from Juergen Schuster’s Why? session Jun 27, 2016, Session 6, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm. I do think in the end that it boils down to Apex geeks being far cooler than we EPMers. Seriously, we need to figure out why they have meetups, why their exclusive conferences are so awesome, and why they are kicking EPM’s conference butt.
Is that enough?
It ought to be.
There’s some really good content in the Apex track even if we never ever ever plan on writing a link of code in that framework. Security, IoT, code quality – these apply to us in equal measure.
I hope to be at each and every one of these sessions and I hope you will be too.
Postscript
Blog Hop
Thanks for attending this ODTUG blog hop! Looking for some other juicy cross-track sessions to make your Kscope16 experience more educational? Check out the following session recommendations from fellow experts!
- ADF/MAF sessions not to be missed, as recommended by Apex expert Scott Spendolini: http://spendolini.blogspot.com/2016/05/my-must-see-adfmaf-sessions-at-kscope-16.html
- BI and Data Warehousing sessions not to be missed, as recommended by EPM expert Dayalan Punniyamoorthy: http://onlyhyperion.blogspot.com/2016/05/Kscope-6-blog-hop-BI-Data-Warehousing-sessions-not-to-miss.html
- Big Data and Advanced Analytics sessions not to be missed, as recommended by Data Warehousing expert Kent Graziano: http://wp.me/p25i8c-Rz
- Database sessions not be missed, as recommended by BI expert Stewart Bryson: https://medium.com/@stewartbryson/what-you-positively-have-to-see-in-the-database-track-at-kscope16-e98615851202#.g74pqn1xp
- EPM sessions not to be missed, as recommended by Database expert Danny Bryant: http://dbaontap.com/2016/05/26/kscope16-blog-hop-epm-sessions-not-miss
Things that go FOOM!
As a child of the Cold War, anything that involves acronyms like AEC or NRC or IAEA makes me positively squirm in my seat no matter how intriguing the thought may be. Even solar radiation is something I avoid. Playing with that stuff without fully understanding it (or wearing a dosimeter)? Madness. Apex? Coolness.
Be seeing you.
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