Oracle htp.p

In 2019, I was engaged by QLC to work for their client, the Western Cape Government (WCG), Department of Health (DOH), Department of The Premier (DoTP).

I was asked to help with the development of Sinjani, a statistics gathering and measurement system developed over the previous 10 years, using the Oracle database, plus Oracle PL/SQL, Oracle htp.p, plus JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc.

I loved the challenge, having not worked in this environment before. I got the job because I knew what a "closure" is! And also because of my wide and general knowledge, and because I had done some htp.p work in 1999, a long time before 2019. I had done quite a few JavaScript and Web Full Stack courses on Udemy, but never actually had a job working in this environment.

I discovered quite quickly that the stress levels working in government were 1 out of 10, whereas I'm used to working in a constant 7 out of 10 state with my private clients, and sometimes the stress levels are 12 out of 10 when demands mean that one needs to work 12 hour days for 6 days a week at a time.

I'm very used to managing my time and I'm very used to moving things around to keep my clients and their project teams happy.

1 out of 10 meant that I could complete one or two things per day, keep my project manager and boss happy, and spend time learning the internals of the complex system that one of the WCG's top developers had developed, which included storing JavaScript in Oracle tables, and also in ensuring that security was kept tight long before it was commonplace. One couldn't simply try to override a URL without logging in properly.

The developer should have developed Oracle Apex as that is essentially what he had done. The only thing missing from his stack was visual form design, but he had worked out how to do form design using parameter strings, which is what HTML coding is, after all!

When the developer was on holiday a challenging problem was presented to the team and I volunteered to do it. I got it done and when the main developer got back he was very impressed with me and he said that I was the first developer in 10 years who had worked out his entire stack and who could help him with "the really complex stuff."

It was another example of learning a stack, and not only learning what I needed to do, but also learning the internals of how the system actually worked, and then being able to use those internals to develop my skills and make myself and my client a better and more interesting environment.

Udemy total training minutes on 17th March 2021

Internet Development Mindmap 29th July 2022