Book Image

Oracle Application Express 3.2 - The Essentials and More

Book Image

Oracle Application Express 3.2 - The Essentials and More

Overview of this book

Developing data-centric web applications can be a real challenge as it is a multi-disciplinary process. There are many technologies involved in the client side (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and so on); the interaction with the database, on the server side; the typeless nature of the web environment; and above all, the need to put it all together. This needs to be done in a manner that will allow the end users to do their job in the simplest and most efficient way, while enriching their user experience. How often have you wished that developing such applications could be uncomplicated and straightforward? This book will show you that it's possible, and teaches you how to do it, using Oracle Application Express (APEX).With this practical guide to APEX, you'll learn how to easily develop data-centric web applications for the Oracle environment. The book covers the development cycle of an APEX application, reviewing the major APEX principles and building blocks chapter by chapter. It starts with the basic skills you need to get going when developing with APEX. Later, you will learn advanced issues, such as how to build tailor-made forms and reports, using APEX APIs, AJAX, and so on. It not only deals with the "How" but also with the "Why", and before long you will be able to understand APEX concepts, and use them to expand and enhance the built-in features, wizards, and tools.The book starts with the design phase, including building the necessary database objects infrastructure; continues with ways to implement the application logic (on the server side) and the User Interface (on the client side), whilst showing you how to enhance your applications' features and functionality according to your specific needs; and it ends with application deployment.The book emphasizes and clearly documents areas such as Globalization, Localization, and developing multi-lingual applications, and includes a special discussion about Right-To-Left (RTL) support for APEX applications, documented here for the first time.Throughout the book, there are many screenshots and snippets of code, taken from working APEX applications. The book is accompanied by demo APEX applications that you can download and install in your APEX environment, thoroughly analyze, and learn from as you read the book.
Table of Contents (30 chapters)
Oracle Application Express 3.2
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Preface

RAD tool


APEX provides us with a full development environment, allowing us to develop, test, and deploy our applications. APEX includes three modules: Application Builder, SQL Workshop, and Utilities.

Application Builder

The Application Builder allows us to develop and test our applications, without leaving the development environment. While working in the Application Builder, it automatically adds a dedicated developer toolbar to every page in our application, making it very easy to toggle between the running page and its code within the Application Builder. The developer toolbar also provides the developer with more options to assist in the development process, like checking session state, running in debug mode, etc. Moreover, the Application Builder allows us to manage, monitor, and control all the application's shared components, supporting objects, and deployment scripts. In addition, the Application Builder includes tools for exporting and importing applications and application components.

Note

Some of these terms might be unfamiliar to you at this stage, but don't be alarmed as we'll cover them all further down this book.

SQL Workshop

The SQL Workshop includes a series of tools which allow us to create, manage, and inspect our application data infrastructure. This including wizards to create and manipulate database objects, scripts and queries, and the SQL Commands facility, which allows us to run SQL and PL/SQL code in the context of APEX. This can be very useful, as some of the APEX features and APIs are not available outside the APEX context (e.g. SQL*Plus) for security reasons.

Utilities

The Utilities module includes a number of tools to help us manage the APEX development-surrounding environment, especially regarding the database. It includes tools for the import and export of data into and out of the database, the APEX data dictionary, and several database monitoring and reporting tools.

The APEX environment also includes a special administration module, which allows us to define the APEX working environment, developers, and users.

All these modules include declarative, wizard-based tools, which makes the application development cycle a very rapid one. These development environment allows us to quickly define a prototype of our application, and then expand it with all the finer details.