My report from ODTUG KScope 2012.

I landed only a couple of hours ago in Amsterdam and here’s my report from Kscope 2012 in San Antonio. As I write this, KScope is still waking up for the final day. Anyway, for me KScope was over yesterday.

The venue, the JW Marriott San Antonio, was IMHO somewhat in the middle of nowhere, which is a pity given the fact that downtown San Antonio is beautiful. It took the free shuttle bus about 35 minutes to get there.

Anyway, I was not around for site seeing, I was visiting the conference. At the conference I joined the Fusion Middleware track, not only as an attendee but also as a presenter of two sessions.
It was a very nice hotel and conference center. At the conference I attended the Fusion Middleware track.

With over 30 sessions and the Sunday Symposium, this years FMW track again was a very usefull track for everyone that wanted to learn about FMW.Most of the session where ADF related, however there were a couple of webcenter and SOA sessions as well.

Sunday

The FMW Sunday symposium started with a status update for Oracle ADF. Three product managers (sorry Duncan, I’m still not used to you not being one of them) talk about Oracle ADF. The most interesting news in this session was the announcement of the ADF samples page, a page with a growing number of ADF sample applications. Next session was about Mobile Design Patterns where Lynn Rampoldi and Edward Roske discussed design patterns for mobile solutions and actually showed these in action.

By the time that session ended, my jet-lag kicked in. I skipped a couple of session, but I was back in time to join the Oracle Fusion Middleware Experts Panel. We got some good questions. One of the attendees wanted to know from each panel member what his or hers favorite part of the ADF Framework was. Being in the middle of the panel (Duncan picked MDS, Chris picked Bounded Taskflows), I had to come with something different, but luckily nobody picked DVT yet so that was (and actually is) my favorite part. Sunday ended with the Speaker reception and the general welcome Reception.

Monday

Monday was a hard day for me. I didn’t get any sleep (it were 3 hrs actually) and I had to give my first presentation at 8.30…. This presentation was called : “ADF – a Special Report” and was all about reporting solutions in ADF. The slides, demos, and technical details will be posted in the next couple of weeks. I was somewhat nervous, given the fact that it was the first presentation of the conference, but I managed to deliver a presentation that in the end proofed to be the best one for that day in the Fusion Middleware Track. So I was very happy with that.

After this session I helped out Chris Muir for the rest of the morning (1000-1200) with a Hands On Training for Oracle ADF Data Visualization Components (ADF DVT). I think there were about 30 people attending the hands on and that they were all having a good time. Always funny to see how in hands on sessions trainees manage to create situations that I’ve never ever seen before. That is why I like to help out at handson labs.

Because of my busy schedule, Monday afternoon was the only possibility for me to get a glimps of San Antonio down town. I took the shuttle bus and walked around in downtown San Antonio. Very beautiful.

Tuesday

Tuesday was interview and meeting day. I started with an interview with the Usability team where I could spill all of the enhancements me and my colleagues from AMIS want to see in JDeveloper. Next I had Lunch with Susan Duncan and David Folk, productmanager of ADF Mobile. During the lunch we discussed the ADF Mobile framework, things you can do with it, and things you can not (yet) do with it. After lunch I attended two more presentations before I went of to prepare my second session. The presentation of Chris Muir was about the UI Shell, and how to implement it in your application. Happy to see that Chris was fair enough to mention the fact that the UI Shell that is shipped by Oracle is not state safe. Next session was Lynn Munsingers session about ADF Mobile. Lynn explained the different scenarios for ADF in mobile environments. Somewhat confusing for the audience, where even 1 attendee asked the following question : “Can you explain what you mean by ADF ?” LOL

Anyway, now it was time to sit down and prepare for my second presentation.

Wednesday

My second presentation was titled “How to bring common UI patterns to ADF”. The slides, demos, and technical details will be posted in the next couple of weeks. In this session I talked about extensions to the UI Tabshell that make it even more usable. Also I showed how to record navigation history, and how you can use Active Data Service in order to push changes from the database to the browser. I had a good feeling about the presentation, and the reactions from the audience were fine.

After lunch and some goodbye handshakes I took of to the airport and now I’m home.

Had a great conference, did a lot of networking and got to know a bunch of nice people. Hope to see you next year in New Orleans