Running a standalone apex listener on a 11gr2

This is just a cookbook version of a get to go of the oracle apex listener on a (windows) oracle 11gR2. Necessary resources comprise the (otn authenticated) installation and developer guide for apex listener (pdf) as well as the download area for apex listener (zip). Note that there is another installation and developer guide for apex listener that comes as html pages with the downloadable package. It does contain release notes as of august 2011 such that it should be more recent than the pdf version (as of February 2011). There also is an apex listener forum hosted by oracle, see the APEX Listener OTN Forum for any user driven discussion threads.

Me, i tested the standalone version of apex listener to be employed in some rapid prototyping developments, establishing an easy backend data connection for nowadays ajax-based web ui’s. Iff you go for some apex listener evaluations pointing to productive environments, do consider deploying the code with a standard j2ee container host.

The installation (and developer) guide is, as mostly with oracle, a well done step-by-step manual just to follow and this is the way i choosed to go as follows: Get the downloadable package from the resource above. It’s an archive versioned as apex_listener.1.1.3.243.11.40.zip to this date and contains a singleton war file along with some documentation.

I already have apex installed with this database instance and decided to extract the archive to E:\oracle\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1\apex-listener, pointed out as the “temp” directory, for whatever reason, in the installation guide. From this root directory i launched the war file along with some documented parameters to depict the deployment directory, the apex image directory, the http port to use, and so on:

E:\oracle\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1\apex-listener\temp>java -Dapex.home=E:\oracle\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1\apex-listener\runtime -Dapex.images=E:\oracle\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1\apex\images -Dapex.port=8585 -jar apex.war

The deployment directory, actually, is the place where the war file will be extracted to and where runtime information as well as configuration data will be written. Do not use -Dapex.erase=true iff you decide to follow my installation hierarchie, because doing so will erase all configuration data too.

Adding page help to a 3.x apex application

I was lately adding some help content to the create/edit form pages of an internal (dev team) change manager application. This is how i did it, discussing some aspects of the design approach as well as the actual execution with apex 3.x (I’m still with apex 3.2, since this version is quite sufficient for an internal app).

Providing on page help for form pages is usually a game like this: some input field may be called “Creation date” and the help text goes as “This is the creation date”. Wow, this is what the world needs to know! I more or less get angry or better ignorant seeing this information garbage but that’s another story. I prefer on page help content that provides page context information, just pointing out dedicated input fields only when necessary.

In fact, apex puts both approaches at your disposal. The key element with apex is the help text region that you may add with the create region dialogue on a page.

Managing the apex (3.2.x) multiselect control

introduction

hi, you are facing the task to edit one tables data as well as an associated relationship table by id on a single apex page? you think that a multiselect list control will do for the relationship table entries but do not know how to integrate it? iff so, you are at the right stop. the following article will give you a screenshot tour of a step-by-step procedure with appropriate annotations.

placing and feeding the multiselect list control

#1 at first, on the dedicated edit page, create a new item within the form region.

Installing Apex (3.2.1) along with OHS (11g iAS_10.1.3.3_Apache2_Modplsql2)

introduction

below you’ll find an installation procedure for apex along with just one variant of the available multitude of web connectors, here ohs (oracle http server aka apache) shipped with 11g. the post heavily sources from this article (in german), which is very much appreciated, but does regard oracle xe only and will not function for a 10g non-xe. futhermore, this article saved my day in pointing out what a non-xe 10gR2 dislikes in regard to dads.conf, the mod_plsql dad configuration file.

installation versions and prerequisites

ok, let’s go straight. the latest version of the 3.x release of apex, which is 3.2.1, can be downloaded here. indeed, apex version 4.0 has already been brought online but i want to eat that banana now. ohs is available as a standalone labelled 10.1.3.3 with the 11g distribution here or as a part of the companion media of ias 10gR3 versioned 10.1.3.5 here. i preferred to employ the first packaging, solely triggered by download time resources. the apex code will live inside an oracle 10gR2 10.2.0.3.

apex 3.2.x does define some installation requirements as set forth in this document. i already have oracle xdb, oracle text and things such that i only needed to update owa (pl/sql web toolkit).

installing apex

firstly do extract the apex source stack (apex_3.2.1.zip) into some persistent location. me, i used %ORACLE_HOME%\apex. from there on do update owa to at least version 10.1.2.0.6.