This is my third day at San Francisco and the Oracle Open World. In this posting, I will focus on an Oracle application express WebSocket session. I also wanted to share a nice lunch at the Yerba Buena Gardens with you – have a look at the pictures.

OOW20130925_001

And the concert:

OOW20130925_002

Let’s come back to the OOW sessions.
The plan for my third day was as follows:

  1. Hardware and software, Engineered to Work Together
  2. Oracle Application Express WebSocket (or When Push Comes to Shove)
  3. Enhanced Availability Options in Oracle Coherence
  4. Cloud Keynote (Larry Ellison presentation was cancelled – The Oracle Team fighting to get the America’s cup and he was by their side to support)
  5. Oracle Database 12c Application Continuity and Transaction Guard

As you will see, this blog post will be very short. I will just cover the Oracle application express WebSocket session because it surprised me.

During the session, John Scott from Apex Evangelist explained the concept of WebSocket. This new web feature has emerged since the arrival of HTML5 and was standardized by W3C. WebSocket is a bi-directional and full duplex communication channel over a single TCP connection. To make it short, a server can push information to all web browsers that are connected.

I was able to get a new vision of the web possibilities.
I will now go deeper into the explanation of this new feature. I will only explain what the speaker demonstrated during his session.
To me, the most interesting demonstration was “Report notification received when other users change report information”.

Report notification received when other users change report information

When a user changes a record on a form that impacts some reports (a list must be maintained) it’s possible to refresh the report through WebSocket and notify the connected user directly that the report content has been changed by other users.

All connected users have the most accurate data directly. It is interesting to have real time data at the stock exchange.

  • Other WebSocket sample usages
  • Real time analytic graphic reload on data change
  • Chat
  • Broadcasting message (maintenance was scheduled, you have 5 minutes to save your change. In other case data will be lost)

Another interesting demonstration that surprised me: Via his iPhone, the speaker made a rotatation and was able to rotate the application screens of all connected users. Very impressive.

For this demonstration, an application was installed on the iPhone to be able to send the rotation information to the connected applications.
In my mind, WebSocket is a revolution coming with HTML5 for web development.
Another day in the Oracle “Open World” with lots of interesting information acquired!