Pro Oracle Application Express - Book

Question

I thought this book was being released at the end of June? It appears as though now it's just a pre order and it doesn't ship until September?
Chad

Answer 1

Hi Chad,
The book was always targetted to coincide with APEX 3.0, as you can appreciate it's difficult to write about a new version of software before it is written (and it takes a long time to write a book, as I've learned).
So, whilst much of the book could be written before I had access to 3.0, much of it was highly dependent on the new features that 3.0 introduced.
However, there is also an important point. The book does not just cover specific features of 3.0, it also tries to show how to use specific features to achieve specific business aims. In other words, rather than just listing the features of APEX 3.0 (which the Oracle provided help does a great job of), the book tries to show how to achieve real world requirements, for example -
"How can I write my own authentication routines and handle account expiry?"
or
"How can I customise how my site looks?"
or
"How can I integrate my apps so the user only need to login once?"
and so on...
It's questions like that which I see coming up time and again in the forums, and that's precisely what I've tried to do with the book. So, whilst the book uses 3.0, many of the techniques that it shows are valid from versions before 3.0 and certainly versions subsequent to 3.0.
When I was first started outlining the book, I was torn between whether it should just show the latest and greatest features available in 3.0, or whether it should attempt to show how to actually use those features in the real world. I opted for the later approach, since ultimately we don't just use a tool for the sake of it, we use it to achieve a particular aim.
As for the 'out-of-date' aspect, there are two sides to that, I could certainly have chopped out huge chunks of what I've put into the book in order to make it ship as soon as possible. But would that have made it a better book (and more useful?) because it came out earlier? I don't think so, but obviously I'm biased ;)
John.