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Oracle Application Express Forms Conversion Overview |
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Oracle Application Express 3.2 enables you to load your Oracle Forms source into an Oracle Application Express project and generate an initial APEX application. The conversion automatically converts most user interface components but does not convert business logic implemented within triggers, program units, or PL/SQL libraries. Loading Oracle Forms definitions into the Oracle Application Express project provides analysis and tracking of the conversion project. Once the initial design has been generated, the rapid application development capabilities inherent within Oracle Application Express can be utilized to enhance and expand the generated application. Post-generation the business logic within Oracle Forms can be re-implemented and new screens which take advantage of Web 2.0 capabilities such as interactive reports and flash charts can be added using the wizards built into the Oracle Application Express builder.
Microsoft Access presents organizations with a myriad of manageability issues. Often simple applications grow in size and complexity and become mission critical. These same applications are often scattered throughout the network making maintenance, backups, security, and access increasingly costly and inconsistent. One key reason for migrating from Microsoft Access to an Oracle database is to consolidate the data and build common applications based on a single data source.
Key Features
The sections that follow describe key features of Oracle Application Express, including:
Reporting
With Oracle Application Express, you can quickly generate HTML reports that display the results of SQL queries. You can also download and print reports in HTML, PDF, RTF (compatible with Microsoft Word), and XLS (compatible with Microsoft Excel) formats.
You can declaratively link reports together to provide drill-down reporting and use bind variables to pass information from session state to a report. Reports support declarative column heading sorting, control breaks, sums, and pagination. Report sorting and pagination can use Partial Page Refresh (PPR) technology to avoid refreshing the entire page. You can also add declarative links to a report to download the report data to CSV or XML formats. Plus, you can customize the report appearance using templates.
"Interactive Reporting" Regions are a further extension of the classic reports that enable dynamic end-users report customization. Users can alter the layout of report data by displaying the columns they are interested in, applying filters, highlighting, and sorting. They can also define breaks, aggregations, include a chart, and their own computations. Users can create multiple variations of the report and save each as a named report. There are also multiple download formats available, including comma-delimited file (CSV) format, Microsoft Excel (XLS) format, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), and Microsoft Word Rich Text Format (RTF).
Forms
Using wizards, you can easily create forms on tables or on a stored procedure. When creating a form on a table, these wizards provide automatic management of insert, update, and delete as well as lost update detection. Once you create a form, you can rearrange form fields (called form items) using a visual representation, enabling you to quickly achieve the layout you want. Form items offer a variety of display options including text fields, text areas, radio groups, select lists, check boxes, date pickers, and popup list of values.
Charting
You can also use wizards to create HTML, SVG, or Flash charts. You can create charts that enable users to drill down from one chart to another chart or report. Charts can also be refreshed using Partial Page Refresh (PPR) technology, avoiding the need to refresh an entire page. You can also configure a chart to refresh at defined intervals. Additionally, you can take advantage of report column templates to add simple HTML bar charts to any report.
PDF Printing
As of Application Express 3.0, you can include the ability to export a report region to PDF - essentially, printing a report. A custom link or button can be added to any report region. You can also define Report Queries and Report Layouts under Shared Components. These are custom reports that can be linked anywhere within an application.
Web Services
The Application Express Web services engine supports loosely defined types and document style Web services. This makes it possible to support JDeveloper created Web services and Oracle BPEL synchronous Web services. It is also possible to interact with Web services over SSL (HTTPS) and Web services that require basic authentication. Finally, there is also support for manually creating a Web service reference if the Application Express engine cannot correctly parse the WSDL document for a particular service. You supply the SOAP request envelope and the URL endpoint among other information about the Web service.
Spreadsheet Upload
Use the Create Application from Spreadsheet Wizard to quickly upload spreadsheet data directly into the database. You can choose to store the data in a new database table or add it to an existing database table. Once the data is uploaded, you can quickly create an application. This handy wizard enables you to go from spreadsheet to a shared application in just a few clicks.
User Interface Themes
Oracle Application Express separates presentation (or user interface themes) from the application logic. You can design your application in one theme, change to another supplied theme, or create and use your own custom theme. By separating the application logic (such as queries, processes, and branches) from the HTML rendering, your application can take advantage of new designs and other technological advances without an application rewrite.
In addition to the default themes provided with Oracle Application Express, you can create your own customized themes. This enables you to design a very specific look and feel to meet your corporate requirements and then publish this as a theme for all other applications to use. This can be done at the workspace level (Workspace Themes) or at the instance level (Public Themes).
Flow Control and Navigation
Every Web application needs navigation and dynamic applications need flow control. Oracle Application Express provides built-in components to simplify the development and maintenance of navigational controls. Navigation is controlled using declarative tabs (one or two levels), breadcrumbs, tree controls, and lists of links. Flow control is performed using declarative branches that can take effect at specific events and under certain conditions. The appearance of navigation controls are managed through templates, making it easy to change from one look to another.
Conditionality on All Components
When creating dynamic Web applications, many application components and processing are conditional. In other words, you only show or process certain pieces of information based on the application context, the data, an event, or a privilege. Oracle Application Express enables you to declaratively specify conditionality of all components. This gives you exact control over what users see or do not see on a tab, button, item, list entry, and so on.
External Interfaces and Extensibility
Even though Oracle Application Express provides a robust declarative environment for building applications, you also have the option of developing custom interfaces or controls. For example, if a component does not meet the needs of your environment, you can generate your own custom HTML using PL/SQL. You can also call external services using Web services. Oracle Application Express also includes APIs to easily integrate email alerts into an application. Plus, because Oracle Application Express resides in the Oracle database, you can take advantage of inherent database capabilities, including external tables, PL/SQL, database links, gateways, and database Java to extend the functionality of your application.
An extensive set of JavaScript API's have been documented for use by Application Developers. The framework allows advanced Oracle Application Express developers to build and leverage custom Web 2.0 capabilities. This increases performance and enables developers to create more dynamic application widgets. Also, all included JavaScript files have been compressed to improve page load time.
Optional Runtime-Only Installation
For testing and production instances, Oracle Application Express supports the ability to install just a runtime version. This minimizes the installed footprint and privileges. It also improves your application security because in a runtime instance developers cannot inadvertently update any application source.
Security
With Oracle Application Express, you can create public applications that do not require a user log in, or you can create secure applications that require authentication. Oracle Application Express provides a number of built-in authentication schemes including Single Sign On, Database Account Credentials, and an easy-to-use user management system. You can also use custom schemes that interface with just about any authentication service including Microsoft Active Directory and Oracle Applications.
Additionally, you can customize authorization to meet the needs of your environment and apply authorization selectively to an entire application, a page, or a page component. Finally, you can also take advantage of an innovative session state protection feature to prevent URL tampering and built-in features to protect an application form SQL Injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.
SQL Workshop Tools
SQL Workshop provides tools to enable you to view and manage database objects from a Web browser. Use SQL Commands to run SQL and PL/SQL statements. Query Builder enables you to define queries by dragging and dropping tables and easily create relationships between objects. Object Browser provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface for viewing, creating, modifying, browsing, and dropping database objects. Finally, you can use SQL Scripts to create, edit, view, run, and delete script files.
Supporting Objects Utility
You can simplify the steps needed to export and install an application in another Oracle Application Express by creating a packaged application. Using the Supporting Objects utility, you can bundle the application definition with scripts for creating the database objects, seed data, images, cascading style sheets, and JavaScript.
Creating a packaged application provides application users with an installer-like experience and automates the process of importing and installing an application in another development, test, or even production instance.
Performance
Oracle Application Express provides application developers and application users with an extremely high level of performance. Because Oracle Application Express resides in the Oracle database, it has minimal impact on network traffic. Plus, Application Builder includes a large number of monitoring reports to enable you to identify and tune application performance.
Packaged Applications
Packaged Applications are fully functional applications that you can use and customize. Packaged applications not only illustrate interesting examples of Oracle Application Express applications, but they provide immediately useful tactical business applications. Packaged applications are ready-to-run - they come complete with database schema, seed data, images, application definitions, everything you need and installation is via a simple to use wizard.
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