The Quick Guide for Getting Started with APEX on Autonomous Database Serverless

You're ready to dive in and get rolling with Oracle APEX on Autonomous Database Serverless.  While there is a fair amount of documentation available showing how to get started with APEX, here is a condensed list of steps to get going.  This assumes that you have already provisioned your Autonomous Data Warehouse or Transaction Processing service, and you're now at the service console.

Logging into APEX Administration

1. Click the Development tab of the Service Console, and then click APEX.
   
   
    
2. To administer APEX on Autonomous Database, you will need to enter:

• Workspace:  INTERNAL. 
• Username:  ADMIN
• Password:  Password of the ADMIN user (the same password you used to access the service console)

Then click the Sign In button.

Creating Your First Workspace

The very first time you login to the instance administration of APEX, you'll be prompted to create your first workspace.  You create APEX applications in workspaces.  Typically, there is a one-to-one mapping between an APEX workspace and a database schema, where you will manage the database objects and data of your application.  Click the Create Workspace button.

1. Enter the database user to associate with your new workspace.  This is the database user who will own the database objects of your application (the schema).  This database user could already exist, or if not, it will be created automatically.
2. Enter the password for the database user.  The password complexity rules are in the documentation, but succinctly stated, they are:
   • Between 12 and 30 characters
   • One uppercase letter
   • One lowercase letter
   • One numeric character
   • Can't container the username
   • And a few other rules...
3. Enter the workspace name.  This will default to the database user name.
4. Click the Create Workspace button.
   
    

If you wish to immediately access the new workspace, click the link of the workspace name in the success message.  Alternatively, you can click the ADMIN username in the upper right and click Sign Out.

Sharing the URL to APEX with Developers

Developers (who are not service administrators) will not have access to the Autonomous Database service console.  Thus, you will need to provide the URL to your developers to access APEX.  As described in the documentation, the easiest way to do this is:

1. Open your Autonomous Database Service Console
2. Click Administration
3. Hover over the APEX icon, right-click your mouse, and copy the URL.  Share this URL with your developers to login to APEX.
   
   

Signing in as a Developer

1. Paste into your browser the URL to APEX for your Autonomous Database service.
2. Enter the workspace name, database user name and password of the database user.
3. Click Sign In

That's all there is to it!  Now you're ready to begin developing and deploying world-class applications faster than you ever have before!

A Few Final Comments

Remember that authentication to the APEX development environment uses database credentials.  This is different than the traditional on-premises version of APEX.  The actual username and password you will use to login to an APEX workspace is a database username and password.

If you wish to add developers to a workspace, those are also database users.  You can create additional developer accounts from within APEX workspace administration, and it will create the corresponding database users if they do not exist.

And lastly, the INTERNAL workspace is only used to access APEX administration and is not used to develop applications.  From APEX administration, you can configure settings and monitor developer and runtime activity of all workspaces in your Autonomous Database Service.

Get ready to be the hero!