Pro Oracle Application Express 4 is your key to mastering one of the most innovative products to come out of Oracle in years. Application Express, termed "APEX" for short, is fast becoming one of the easiest and most widely-used of tools for creating enterprise-level applications that run against an Oracle database. APEX is easy enough for power users to create ad-hoc applications atop something more reliable than a spreadsheet. Yet APEX is powerful and extensible enough to enable fully-scalable, enterprise-level applications that are accessed by thousands of users.

Authors Tim Fox, John Scott, and Scott Spendolini take you to the professional level in developing for Application Express. They show how to handle user authentication in enterprise environments and how to extend APEX by writing components based upon Oracle’s new plug-in architecture. You’ll learn to deal with localization issues such as time zones and translations, and to customize the look and feel of an APEX website to blend in with your corporate branding strategy. The authors also cover web service development, performance and scalability, and the production issues that you encounter in enterprise-level deployments. Many years of experience in solving the “hard problems” are coalesced in this book to help you, the reader, take advantage of all that APEX has to offer.

• Focuses on high-end, enterprise-level development
• Covers new features such as plug-ins and Websheets
• Introduces the new interface released with APEX 4.0

What you’ll learn

• Design APEX solutions that conform to your corporate look and feel
• Create compelling reports, charts, navigation, and layout
• Create your own components based upon APEX’s new plug-in architecture
• Authenticate users and manage their access to your applications
• Develop and deploy web services using APEX
• Scale APEX applications to thousands of users
• Secure your applications and data from intrusion

Who this book is for

Pro Oracle Application Express 4 is aimed at application developers looking for a rapid application development environment harnessing the full power of the Oracle Database, including SQL and PL/SQL. The book meets the needs of developers working at both the departmental and the enterprise level, with an emphasis on high-end, enterprise deployment.

Table of Contents

1. Development Best Practices
2. Authentication and User Management
3. Conditions and Authorization Schemes
4. Data Security
5. Navigation and Layout
6. Reports and Charts
7. Dynamic Actions: Ajax and JavaScript
8. WebSheets
9. Reporting and Printing
10. Themes and Templates
11. Localization Issues
12. Plugins
13. Web Service Development
14. Performance and Scalability
15. Production Issues
16. APEX Dictionary