Skip to main content

Installing APEX 2.2 on XE

Image
By
As you might have noticed APEX 2.2 is available for download. On the download site nowhere is stated that is doesn’t work for on XE, but installing on XE fails directly. How to solve this?

This is due to the following lines in the upgrade procedure in the file apexins.sql:
declare
t_edition varchar2(30);
edition_is_xe exception;
begin
--select edition into t_edition from v$instance;
execute immediate 'select edition from v$instance' into t_edition;
if nvl(t_edition,'x') = 'XE'
then
dbms_output.put_line('---------------------------------');
dbms_output.put_line('- Ap Ex cant be installed in Express Edition.-');
dbms_output.put_line('-------------------------------------');
raise edition_is_xe;
end if;
exception
when edition_is_xe then raise;
when others then null; -- no edition column, not xe
end;
/
Once the lines are REM’med out the upgrade process runs fine. After finishing the other steps from the upgrade manual I can login, change and run previously defined applications. The main difference with the “lightweight” APEX installed with XE is that there are workspaces defined for every Apex-developer (with the same name).

At this point you are only missing access to the workspace INTERNAL using the ADMIN account. This is easily solved by creating a new admin account by logging in in SQLPLUS as FLOWS_020200 user (unlock the account first) and issue:
begin
wwv_flow_api.set_security_group_id(p_security_group_id=>10);
wwv_flow_fnd_user_api.create_fnd_user(
p_user_name => 'admin2',
p_email_address => 'myemail@mydomain.com',
p_web_password => 'admin2') ;
end;
/
commit;
Now we can administer APEX on XE with ADMIN2 as were it a “normal” APEX installation!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hello Roel !
I cannot find out where to copy the "images"-directory from the installation-zip into the XE-tree as told in the post installation tasks. I used /i/ as @apexins-parameter as recommended but now I am standing in the dark. The diretories named in the installation docu does not exist in the XE-version. Do you have a hint ? Thanks !

Andree
12:31 pm
Roel said…
Andree,

/i/ is a virtual directory. When using XE (on Windows XP) you can create a new Network Location using the Wizard (create networking location). There you can enter http://127.0.0.1:8080/i/ as the location (use system/systempassword when prompting for user/password). Now you have a virtual directory (let's call it 'Z')in your Explorer, and you can copy the images to z:\img\.
See http://daust.blogspot.com/2006/03/where-are-images-of-application.html for more info about this...
2:39 pm
ApexDev said…
Hello,
Just googling APEX and XE and this blog came up near top. Do you know of any issues installing APEX 2.2 (not an Upgrade) with Oracle XE?

Any other websites purely that talk about supportability and other issues with Oracle XE and APEX?

Am aware of OTN but wondering if there were any site specific to this setup?

Regards,
ApexDev
11:16 pm
Roel said…
ApexDev,
Before installing APEX on XE you first need to de-install XE (because Apex comes pre-installed on XE). I've never done this (there was no need), so I can't help you out there. Other sites of interest about Apex (on XE or other flavour):
http://spendolini.blogspot.com/
http://dgielis.blogspot.com/
http://inside-apex.blogspot.com/
http://iadvise.blogspot.com/
Ofcourse this is absolutely not complete list, but something to start with...

Gr
Roel
1:56 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Filtering in the APEX Interactive Grid

By
Remember Oracle Forms? One of the nice features of Forms was the use of GLOBAL items. More or less comparable to Application Items in APEX. These GLOBALS where often used to pre-query data. For example you queried Employee 200 in Form A, then opened Form B and on opening that Form the Employee field is filled with that (GLOBAL) value of 200 and the query was executed. So without additional keys strokes or entering data, when switching to another Form a user would immediately see the data in the same context. And they loved that. In APEX you can create a similar experience using Application Items (or an Item on the Global Page) for Classic Reports (by setting a Default Value to a Search Item) and Interactive Reports (using the  APEX_IR.ADD_FILTER  procedure). But what about the Interactive Grid? There is no APEX_IG package ... so the first thing we have to figure out is how can we set a filter programmatically? Start with creating an Interactive Grid based upon the good o...
1 comment
Read more

Stop using validations for checking constraints !

By
 If you run your APEX application - like a Form based on the EMP table - and test if you can change the value of Department to something else then the standard values of 10, 20, 30 or 40, you'll get a nice error message like this: But it isn't really nice, is it? So what do a lot of developers do? They create a validation (just) in order to show a nicer, better worded, error message like "This is not a valid department".  And what you then just did is writing code twice : Once in the database as a (foreign key) check constraint and once as a sql statement in your validation. And we all know : writing code twice is usually not a good idea - and executing the same query twice is not enhancing your performance! So how can we transform that ugly error message into something nice? By combining two APEX features: the Error Handling Function and the Text Messages! Start with copying the example of an Error Handling Function from the APEX documentation. Create this function ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Refresh selected row(s) in an Interactive Grid

By
In my previous post I blogged about pushing changed rows from the dabatase into an Interactive Grid . The use case I'll cover right here is probably more common - and therefore more useful! Until we had the IG, we showed the data in a report (Interactive or Classic). Changes to the data where made by popping up a form page, making changes, saving and refreshing the report upon closing the dialog. Or by clicking an icon / button / link in your report that makes some changes to the data (like changing a status) and ... refresh the report.  That all works fine, but the downsides are: The whole dataset is returned from the server to the client - again and again. And if your pagination size is large, that does lead to more and more network traffic, more interpretation by the browser and more waiting time for the end user. The "current record" might be out of focus after the refresh, especially by larger pagination sizes, as the first rows will be shown. Or (even wors...
Post a Comment
Read more