Book Image

Oracle Application Express 4.0 with Ext JS

By : Mark Lancaster
Book Image

Oracle Application Express 4.0 with Ext JS

By: Mark Lancaster

Overview of this book

Modern web-based applications are moving rapidly away from simple HTML pages, with users expecting desktop styled rich internet applications. Oracle Application Express includes multiple built-in interfaces especially designed for adding JavaScript libraries and components. Ext JS is a polished, high performance set of customizable UI widgets with a well designed and extensible Component model. Combining Ext JS components with the well engineered server side processing provided by Oracle APEX is a recipe for success. Written by Oracle ACE, Mark Lancaster, this book is a complete practical guide to building robust desktop-styled web applications using Oracle Application Express and the powerful Ext JS JavaScript library This book starts off by setting up a productive environment for Oracle APEX and Ext JS, preparing you to get ready to code, and then gradually introducing you to the Ext JS API. You then create a theme based on Ext JS into APEX from scratch, starting with integrating the Ext JS library into the page template, then covering all the template types. You further enrich your interface by integrating Ext JS form components and Ext JS layout elements. You are shown how to integrate components including tab panels, toolbars and menus. Existing components are also enhanced, transforming select lists into auto-completing combo boxes and text-areas auto-sizing as you type.Using exciting new Plug-ins feature, you will learn how to develop custom APEX components that can be used declaritively. This book extends native APEX functionality by integrating Ext JS widgets and components with integrated server-side JavaScript generation, AJAX processing and validation.The book then covers integrating Plug-ins with APEX provided Dynamic Actions JavaScript. You proceed further to build advanced interactive components using AJAX enabled trees and grids. Then you will see how to use the iFrames component along with page templates to build a multi-page interface and also deal with JavaScript communication between iFrames. Finally, you will integrate Ext JS with jQuery using the Ext jQuery adaptor. This book also covers examples of jQuery functionality interacting with Ext JS. By the end of this book you will also learn to improve the performance of your JavaScripts.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Oracle Application Express 4.0 with Ext JS
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Installing Oracle APEX


Oracle APEX 4.0 requires a minimum database edition of 10.2.0.3, or Oracle XE, which, despite reporting as being 10.2.0.1, includes additional features that didn't make it into the supported versions of the database.

Note

This book won't be going into the details on how to install Oracle APEX into the database, as that is very well covered by the documentation provided with the product and available online at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17556_01/doc/install.40/e15513/toc.htm.

Oracle APEX now comes pre-installed on all editions of Oracle database 11.1 upwards, and is also pre-installed in Oracle XE the free edition of the database. In both cases, you will need to upgrade your Oracle APEX installation to Oracle APEX 4.0 the version covered in this book. Go to Oracle Application Express on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/apex/index.html, and download the latest production version of Oracle APEX.

Regardless of whether you're installing or upgrading Oracle APEX, there is one important decision you need to consider before you proceed. By default, Oracle APEX is installed into the SYSAUX tablespace.

Note

You have the option when installing or upgrading to specify an alternative tablespace.

The SYSAUX tablespace is installed as an auxiliary tablespace to the SYSTEM tablespace when the database is created. It holds a number of database components that you may or may not use, depending on the nature of your applications, such as Oracle Text, Oracle Spatial, and Oracle interMedia.

It also contains components such as Enterprise Manager and Automatic Workload Repository which, depending on several factors, such as number of active sessions, data retention period, and snapshot intervals, can require significant storage volumes and contain highly volatile data, leading to disk I/O contention.

By installing Oracle APEX into its own tablespace, database administrators (DBAs) are able to manage it in isolation from other database components, allowing more flexibility in performing database operations. For example, you can reduce I/O contention by storing the underlying data files of the APEX tablespace on different disk drives to the SYSAUX tablespace.

Similarly, taking the individual Oracle APEX tablespace offline to perform a data recovery operation allows other applications to remain online, providing better overall availability. Or in another scenario, take advantage of transportable tablespaces to copy your Oracle APEX environment to another database quickly.