Pro Oracle Application Express 4 | springerprofessional.de

Springer Professional

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2011 | Buch | 2. Auflage

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Pro Oracle Application Express 4

verfasst von: Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Verlag: Apress

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

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

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Development Best Practices

Abstract

Oracle Application Express (APEX) makes it extremely easy to quickly prototype and develop a web application. However, as a software developer, you’re probably aware that speed of development is only one of a number of criteria that will contribute to the perceived success (or failure) of your project.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 2. Authentication and User Management

Abstract

Controlling who can and who can’t access your application is an extremely important consideration when designing your applications. The authentication method you choose for your application will define how the identity of users is determined and verified. A comprehensive security model will also address authorization—the process of specifying what a user can do once he is logged into an application.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 3. Conditions and Authorization Schemes

Abstract

This chapter covers two APEX features: conditions and authorization schemes. These two features can often be used to achieve the same thing: controlling the areas of your application the user can access and use.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 4. Data Security

Abstract

The previous chapter dealt with using conditional display and authorization schemes to control which data users can access and modify. However, even when you use both of these methods, users may still be able to gain access to data that they should not be able to view, or even worse, be able to modify or delete that data.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 5. Navigation and Layout

Abstract

An often overlooked area of application design is how users will navigate around the system. We typically give a lot of thought to how individual screens and pages will look; but, we don’t always give the same amount of consideration to how the user will move among those pages. Why is this important? Well, if users find it difficult to navigate your application, they will quickly become frustrated with the application. Your application should have a navigation system that’s easy to use and takes into account the areas users will access most frequently

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 6. Reports and Charts

Abstract

Many applications need the ability to display information to the end user in the form of a report or a chart. Fortunately, APEX makes this extremely easy, allowing you to create reports and charts out of the box. APEX provides an assortment of ready-made report and chart types, and you can customize them in many ways. APEX 4 includes a new charting engine, AnyCharts 5.1, which improves rendering time, generates better graphics, and allows for greater customization.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 7. Dynamic Actions

Abstract

Dynamic Actions are a new feature of APEX 4.0 that allows you to implement Ajax functionality with minimal coding. To understand why Dynamic Actions are important, a little history of Ajax is in order. The name Ajax is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It is more of a programming methodology than a new programming language. Prior to 1999 when Microsoft created the XMLHTTP ActiveX object, refreshing any content on a web page required a refresh of the entire page. The problem with full page refreshes was that if the user entered data before the refresh, the developer was often responsible for saving that data so that it reappeared after the new page was displayed. The drawback was that the developer needed to know something about all of the following technologies:

XHTML
The Document Object Model (DOM)
CSS
Use of the XMLHttpRequest object
JavaScript

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 8. Websheets

Abstract

Websheets are intended to give users who have little or no SQL experience a way to create interactive, data-centric applications that allow users to share and update both structured and unstructured data. Users can create Data Grids, interactive reports, and text pages grouped into hierarchies with little or no coding. The Websheet application development environment operates more like a Wiki than a traditional Integrated Development Environment (IDE) in that users can assume the roles of consumers, contributors, or administrators.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 9. Reporting and Printing

Abstract

In versions of APEX prior to version 3.0, printing was often seen as one of the weakest areas. It has always been possible to use the print functionality of the browser to print the web page that is currently being viewed (for example, if it contains a report), and this sort of built-in browser functionality may be sufficient in many cases. However, if you require more complex printing or you wish to print only the report, rather than the entire content of the page, clearly you will need another solution.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 10. Themes and Templates

Abstract

Let’s face it: most application developers are not graphic designers. Despite this fact, they frequently are tasked with making an application “look good.” Oddly enough, you rarely hear about graphic designe being tasked with creating entity-relationship diagrams, tuning slow queries, and the like.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 11. Localization Issues

Abstract

Since APEX is a web development environment, it allows your application to be accessed over an intranet or the Internet by a geographically diverse set of end users. These end users may cross geographical and language boundaries, which means that you may need to enable your application to be viewed in different languages. Fortunately, the APEX development team foresaw this requirement, and has provided a number of features to allow developers to create multilingual applications.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 12. Plug-ins

Abstract

Plug-ins, new in APEX 4.0, allow you to extend the functionality of item types, region types, dynamic actions, and process types. The plug-in architecture includes a declarative development environment that lets you create custom versions of these built-in objects. For example, instead of using a standard select list or check box, you could build a “star rating” item that allows your user to provide feedback using a one-to-five star graphic. This new item type could then be used across all your applications.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 13. Web Services

Abstract

The term web service refers to a web-accessible application that performs some action based on a request from a client. For these entities to communicate, an agreed upon language, or communication protocol, must be used. The first web services used the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), which is an XML-based messaging protocol. Although SOAP is effective, it is often perceived as being a heavyweight and difficult to use.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 14. Performance and Scalability

Abstract

Quite often, we tend to think of performance and scalability in terms of optimizing large systems to cope with huge numbers of end users. However, that is only one side of it. Often, even the most modest of systems can benefit from considering performance and potential scalability in their design.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 15. Production Issues

Abstract

This chapter is a bit of a catch-all. It covers some of the common issues you might encounter when running your applications in a production environment. You’ll find a number of techniques and features that can make managing your applications a bit easier.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Chapter 16. APEX Dictionary

Abstract

The APEX dictionary (or repository, as it is also known) is arguably one of the most exciting features in APEX, and perhaps also one of the most underutilized.

Tim Fox, John Edward Scott, Scott Spendolini

Backmatter

Titel: Pro Oracle Application Express 4
verfasst von: Tim Fox
John Edward Scott
Scott Spendolini
Copyright-Jahr: 2011
Verlag: Apress
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4302-3495-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-4302-3494-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-3495-1

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