How to play and learn �Oracle APEX for free*

*fine print actually includes bonus stuff

Scott Wesley

Modis

Perth, Western Australia

@swesley_perth

grassroots-oracle.com

Scott Wesley – A Career Timeline

First presentation in …

ChatGTP Presentation

Agenda

How does it work?

Why is it good?

How can I learn?

Environment options

Ways to practice

Demo?

What is

Oracle APEX

Elevator Pitch

Oracle APEX is a fast way to develop interactive, data-centric web-based applications for the business.

On a longer ride

• fast prototyping
• built in search options
• responsive layout
• web services
• interactive charts
• transactional emailing
• secure, auth options
• database driven
• community support

https://www.frasit.dk/apex-explained-to-managers/

• Master detail forms
• Application blueprints
• Sophisticated LOVs
• Built-in AOP integration
• Faceted Search
• Quick SQL
• Drag/drop data loading
• Email templates
• Interactive Grids
• Calendars
• Application advisor

​

ChatGPT Elevator

Why is it good?

1. Fast development
2. Great for mocking up ideas & workflow concepts
3. Interactive applications
4. Modern technology - any device
5. Great community

PL/SQL Driven

What I really like as a developer

1. Quick & easy to do all the basics

​

• Dynamic actions to add nifty UX to pages

​

• Get a lot out of common patterns

SQL + PL/SQL

Architecture

MyDB

Feature

~ Magic ~

Component properties

Oracle APEX Collateral

apex.oracle.com

/bookmarks

apex.oracle.com/en/learn/videos/

Community

apex.world/ords/f?p=100

One.

Stop.

Shop.

#orclAPEX

forums.oracle.com/ords/apexds/domain/dev-community/category/apex

top 3 forum

AskTom.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=100

AskTom Office Hours

123+ recordings

Community+

• Presentations
• ODTUG (Kscope)
• Bloggers
• (apex.world)
• Plugins
• Free + Supported
• https://fos.world/ords/f?p=10000
• https://www.plug-ins-pro.com/ords/uc/r/plug-ins-pro/home
• Dev Gym
• Quizzes
• devgym.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=10001

Community+

https://github.com/Dani3lSun/awesome-orclapex

Environment Options

apex.oracle.com

Oracle APEX Hosting

Oracle Cloud Offering

• 2 DB with 1 OCPU + 20 GB Storage
• 200 GB total storage
• 10 GB Object storage
• 10 GB Object storage - infrequent access
• 10 GB Archive storage
• 2 VMs 1GB Memory
• 5 OCI Bastions

https://www.slideshare.net/MichaelHichwa/apex-and-oracle-apex-oracle-autonomous-database-always-free-oracle-cloud-services

• Autonomous Database
• Oracle APEX
• RESTful Services and SODA
• SQL Developer Web
• Oracle Machine Learning

but wait, there's more…

Oracle Cloud Offering

• Observability
• Monitoring
• 500 million ingestion datapoints
• 1 billion retrieval datapoints
• Logging 10 GB per month
• Notifications: 1 million via https, 1000 emails per month

• Additional services
• Load balancer 10 Mbps bandwidth
• Outbound Data Transfer: 10 TB per month
• VCN Flow Logs: 10 GB per month
• Site to site VPN: 50 IPSec connections
• Certificates: 5 Private CA and 150 private TLS certificates
• Email: 100 per day

​

Always free services available for unlimited time

Trial = extra stuff

Forms Developers

Spot the difference!

Beware of Decepticons

Ways to practice

Admin / Backend Application

• Common Queries
• Error Logs
• Meta-data (ref codes)
• Scheduled Jobs
• Common Scripts

• Smoke tests
• Email
• Web Services
• Data Fixes
• Data Validation

Side Project

• Personal Finance
• Community Project
• Genealogy
• Convert a Spreadsheet
• Friend's Business
• Million dollar app $$

Replicate Samples

• Charts
• Data Loading
• Dynamic Actions
• Collections
• File upload

/ download

• Maps
• Reporting

https://github.com/oracle/apex/tree/22.2/sample-apps

Convert Forms

• Common Symptoms
• UX Workflow - changes
• Business rules - aged
• Form/Page needs - reviewed
• Hardware Specs
• Licensing fees
• Reporting behaviour - live data
• User engagement - increases
• PDFs - $$

** not available on Switch

Can we squeeze in a demo?

Final Destination

Application Builder

apex.oracle.com/ords/f?p=4000:1500:11556571924376

Page List

New Page

New Page �- details

New Page�- menu

Page �Builder�- created

Right-click�- Add region

Define �query

Right click�- add item�- add button

Create�Dynamic�Action�(press button)

Add action�- execute pl/sql

Dynamic Action = JavaScript you don't see

Define �PL/SQL, �items to �submit

Save �changes

APEX Source /Meta-data

Runtime �- ready

Runtime �- broken

Show debug list

View page debug

Add process �on page load

Validate�PL/SQL

Validate �SQL

Runtime�- Success

Attribute �changes

Attribute�changes�(only clicks)

Bonus!

$('#my_region').find('.nodatafound').length == 1

Does this region…

Contain this class

select count(*)

from html

where id = 'my_region'

and class = 'nodatafound'

Collection report region

Hide when no data found

Supporting Code

-- Initialise collection (create parent record)

apex_collection.create_or_truncate_collection('APEX101');

​

-- Add collection record (child)

APEX_COLLECTION.ADD_MEMBER (

p_collection_name => 'APEX101'

,p_c001 => :p15_value -- value from page

);

-- Query collection data

select seq_id, c001

from apex_collections

where collection_name = 'APEX101'

​

-- Check for results (tidier/faster than SQL solution)

$('#my_region').find('.nodatafound').length == 1

Dark Mode

apex.oracle.com/ords/f?p=4000:4500:11556571924376

Question

https://apex.world

Answer

Scott Wesley

Modis

Perth, Western Australia

@swesley_perth

grassroots-oracle.com