After little bit of brains storming and checking online, I found out that one of the way to solve this error is to disable the Oracle Advanced Security Authentication and let database use the supplied user name and password to authenticate.

It can be disable by updating the sqlnet.ora file with the following entry:

SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES = (NONE)

Note : Default entry in my case was SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NTS)

Guys do check out other method and let me know.

Any way the above method worked for me and I am happy with that at least by Monday morning, my system will be available for testing purpose

Then to test it out, I login into Oracle XE’s SQL*Plus console and tried to run a create bitmap index DDL sql and result was still negative as follows.

So I was convince that it does not support Bit-mapped Indexes..

Where Question was as follows:
Consider Test table have Numb (Number datatype) field. table values are given below.

Table Name: Test
NUMB
1
2
4
7
8
9
12 … This table have more than thousand records like that…..

How to retrive the missing numbers. I’m expecting the output 3,5,6,10,11……..
Could you please give the SQL for this task. Thanks!

One of the member David Grimberg gave following solution.

select level numb from dual connect by level <= (select max(numb) from test)
minus
select numb from test;

I was very impress with this sql because I recognize the worth of this sql to myself and many situation in which I am stuck many times.

So many time I am stuck with a situation that we need to write a query which should generate sequence number.

This solution never came to my mind as most of the time I resorted to pipeline function or some dummy table.

Now with the help of David’s solution it can be easily generated with simple sql as follows:

select level seq from dual connect by level <= <number till where you want to generate the sequence>

Example:

The simplicity of the solution really impressed me!

Thanks David for sharing it and hope that it will be useful to others!

First one is as follows which was available before version  3.1
@UNZIP_DIR/apex/apxxepwd.sql password

Where
password is the password of the Application Express internal ADMIN account.

Second one is as follows which is new in version 3.1
@UNZIP_DIR/apex/apxchpwd.sql

When prompted enter a password for the ADMIN account.

Where:
UNZIP_DIR is the directory where you unzip your application express installation.

Steps to up-gradation are as follows:

1. Change your working directory to apex where you have unzip the installation.

2. Start SQL*Plus from here and connect to the database as SYSDBA role. Thus making apex as your working directory.

3. To Install Full development environment
@apexins tablespace_apex tablespace_files tablespace_temp images

it can be something like this

@apexins SYSAUX SYSAUX TEMP /i/

To Install Runtime environment.

@apxrtins tablespace_apex tablespace_files tablespace_temp images

it can be something like this

@apxrtins SYSAUX SYSAUX TEMP /i/

Where:

tablespace_apex is the name of the tablespace for the Oracle Application Express application user.

tablespace_files is the name of the tablespace for the Oracle Application Express files user.

tablespace_temp is the name of the temporary tablespace.

images is the virtual directory for Oracle Application Express images.
Important Notes:

• Define the virtual image directory as /i/ to support future Oracle Application Express upgrades.
• Increase the SYSTEM tablespace otherwise you may see following error.

Once you complete the the above steps, you need to perform the following steps to complete the upgrade:

Connect as a SYSDBA

Run apxldimg.sql as follows (this will update images):
@UNZIP_DIR/apex/apxldimg.sql UNZIP_DIR

Run apxxepwd.sql to reinitialize the ADMIN password.
@UNZIP_DIR/apex/apxxepwd.sql password

Where:
password is the password of the Application Express internal ADMIN account

UNZIP_DIR is the directory where you unzip your application express installation.

When logging into Application Express 3.1 in Oracle Database XE, you will now be presented with a login page that prompts for Workspace, Username and Password.

The Workspace name is equal to the database username used to login to Oracle Database XE.

For example, in Oracle Database XE, if you used credentials Username=SCOTT, Password=TIGER, in Application Express 3.1, you will now use Workspace=SCOTT, Username=SCOTT, Password=TIGER.

So to change the password without knowing the old password, I login as SYS into the Database Server and run the following script.

SQLPLUS> @C:\oraclexe\apex\apxxepwd.sql new_password

Where “C:\oraclexe\apex” is APEX_HOME directory.

What this script is doing is as follows:

First it changes the current schema to “FLOWS_030000″

alter session set current_schema = FLOWS_030000;

The set the security group id and and user name using wwv_flow_security package as follows:
wwv_flow_security.g_security_group_id := 10;
wwv_flow_security.g_user := ‘ADMIN’;

The change the status as “import in progress” using wwv_flow_security package
wwv_flow_security.g_import_in_progress := true;

Then get the internal user id of the “ADMIN” with a security group of 10.
for c1 in (select user_id
from wwv_flow_fnd_user
where security_group_id = wwv_flow_security.g_security_group_id
and user_name = wwv_flow_security.g_user) loop

Then edit the user using wwv_flow_security package as follows:
wwv_flow_fnd_user_api.edit_fnd_user(
p_user_id => c1.user_id,
p_user_name => wwv_flow_security.g_user,
p_web_password => ‘&1′,
p_new_password => ‘&1′);
end loop;

The change the status back to normal using wwv_flow_security package
wwv_flow_security.g_import_in_progress := false;

If you want to see script, can download from here apxxepwd.txt

But today, when I was trying to connect Oracle, I was contineously getting following error.

Flashing message “ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied
Warning: You are no longer connected to ORACLE.”.

I was out of clue why exactly this is happening as I was providing right username and password!

I became little bit irritated, what’s wrong am I doing.

Usually I provide username and password in small case as I know that Oracle is case insensitive. So for a change I tried the same username and password with upper case and it get connected.

I did little bit more R&D over this and I found that from Oracle 11g onwards, Oracle has decided to be little bit case sensitive.

Let me show you with example.

Illustration:
Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SYSTEM@ orcl>ALTER USER FLEETWIZ IDENTIFIED BY FLEETwiz;

User altered.

SYSTEM@ orcl>conn
Enter user-name: fleetWIZ/fleetwiz@orcl
ERROR:
ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied
Warning: You are no longer connected to ORACLE.
@ >

Then I tried with…

@ >conn FLEETwiz/FLEETwiz@orcl
Connected.
FLEETWIZ@ orcl>

Now Check on Db 10g
——————–
Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options
SYSTEM@ db>ALTER USER FLEETWIZ IDENTIFIED BY FLEETwiz;

User altered.

SYSTEM@ orcl>conn
Enter user-name: fleetWIZ/fleetwiz@db
Connected.
FLEETWIZ@ db>
FLEETWIZ@ db>conn
Enter user-name: FLEETWIZ/fleetwiz@db
Connected.
FLEETWIZ@ db>

Wow, Interesting :=)

Suffice to say that now Oracle doesn’t care about the “username” whether it is being provided in upper/lower/mixed case but the password for authentication must be in same case as original password.

When we install it, it comes with demos in flash, Sample XML data file with sample templates, PDF help for BI Publisher and plugin for MS Word.

Plugin in MS Word look something like as follows:

It can be downloaded from Oracle site.

I also used sum function in this report.

First I loaded XML data as before.

My XML data structure is as follows:

My intention is to design a summary report of total sale by year and month.

Run Table Wizard as follows:

Follow the following steps in Wizard:

Once clicked the result will be as follows:

Now I deleted whole Table inside the inside second column of second row of main table.

Now it should look like as follows:

Now keep you cursor inside second column of second row of main table.

Now goto Choose Field menu as follows:

Choose options as follows and click “Insert” button:

Take care cursor should be at location 3.

Now you report format will look like as follows:

Before previewing my report I changed the second column title to “Total Sales”.

So the final format will be as follows:

Thats all, its done!

When look into preview it will look like as follows:

Now I am looking forward to my next report using “Condition Formating”!

Today I would like to share my understanding about BI Publisher till now.

Just like going from Oracle Forms 6 to Oracle Forms 6i, I felt no difference from programming point of view except few tit-bits here and there.

In reality it was big change. Whole architecture was changed.

Now I am feeling same thing when I am comparing Oracle Reports and BI Publisher.

From designing point of view, I don’t feel any much change. The learning curve is very smooth.

But from architecture point of view, it’s a hell lot of a change.

I think it shows Oracle is looking into future as it has always done.

Starting with BI Publisher, Oracle is now breaking concept of reporting into three parts as follows:

1. Data Source (Query)
2. Layout
3. Translation

Before this all the above components used to be in one file i.e. RDF or REP.

This new approach will make the reporting much more flexible and easier to maintain.

There can be one Data Source, distributed to many layouts and each layout can be translated to many formats.

Maintenance point of view, IT department just need to maintain one Data Source. Functional user can maintain the layout with little practice using ms word and adobe acrobat which can be distributed to number of format without any programming involved.

Sounds good, let’s see how it works out!