Beginning Oracle Application Express

Oracle Application Express is an easy-to-use application development environment built on the Oracle technology stack. There are two aspects of that previous sentence that you may find jarring—that Oracle, a company widely known for its database technology, has an application development environment, and that Oracle, a company thought of as delivering high-end, enterprise-ready technology, has anything that is easy to use.

But, as this book will show, the introductory statement is completely accurate. Oracle Application Express, commonly known as Oracle APEX or simply APEX, does benefit from the long-established enterprise-class robustness that is the hallmark of Oracle technology. The applications you build will be able to support hundreds of users and many terabytes of data, scalability far beyond even the imagination of most other development environments.

This book is aimed at a particular group of users—those who are not familiar with Oracle Application Express. The book assumes that you have a basic knowledge of application development, the type you could get from playing around with a personal database such as Access. In fact, this book was written with an Access developer in mind—an Access developer looking to step up to a more scalable and reliable environment, with reduced maintenance overhead and greater integration between application systems.

This book covers the use of Oracle Application Express. Although the book is based on the 3.5 version, you can use the book with older versions as well. However, since the book will use a hosted version of Oracle Application Express, and since both the Oracle database that support the product and the product itself are available as free downloads from http://otn.oracle.com, you should be able to use the latest version easily.

Beginning Oracle® Application Express

Even if you have limited programming experience, this hands-on guide will get you up and running quickly with Oracle Application Express (APEX). It covers the concepts and practical steps involved in building a web application from the ground up using Oracle APEX. You'll discover how to progress through the complete development process with the help of detailed instructions on creating, customizing, and extending an Oracle database application.

Highly respected Oracle expert Rick Greenwald begins by giving you the necessary tools to build a useable order entry system. He then explains how to enhance the system with reports, charts, themes, and templates. You'll also find out how to use packaged applications and work with multiple applications and you'll learn how to migrate and integrate data with the Oracle environment.

By the end of this book, you'll have a strong understanding of Oracle APEX and the world of Oracle technology, which will enable you to build your own applications and create further refinements that meet your reporting needs.

What you will learn from this book

• Steps to ensure that users enter correct data while using your applications

• The powerful and flexible reports you can create with Oracle APEX

• Advanced options for customizing user interfaces

• lTechniques for using the power of PL/SQL to extend the logic in your application

• Ways to implement security for your APEX environment

• The options for deploying an APEX application to another environment

• How to migrate applications from Microsoft® Access® to Oracle Application Express

Who this book is for

This book is for Access developers looking to step up to a more scalable and reliable environment, with reduced maintenance overhead and greater integration between application systems.

Wrox Beginning guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think, providing a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.