Recent Posts by Carsten Czarski

Every APEX developer knows how to export and import applications using the Application Builder. And since an APEX export file is actually a SQL script, it's also pretty obvious, that one can use SQL*Plus or SQLcl to deploy the application on the target system. So far, so good. The export part of the process can also be automated: APEX provides the APEXExport command line utility for years now. This Java-based tool allows to build shell scripts to export APEX applications or...

With APEX 20.2, the new REST Source Synchronization feature was introduced, which allows to synchronize data from a REST API to a local table - without any code at all. This posting will show, how two REST APIs (which model a parent-child relationship) can be synchronized to two(!) local tables. Some PL/SQL code will be required, but declarative APEX features will be used to the maximum possible extent. Prerequisites First, we need two REST APIs to play with. Let's prepare two...

This blog posting describes how to add a chart region to a page containing the new Faceted Search feature. Chart display is always in sync with Faceted Search report display. Since APEX does not support this out-of-the-box yet, we'll utilize a very interesting enhancement to the APEX_REGION PL/SQL package, which was introduced in the latest Application Express Release 19.2: APEX_REGION.OPEN_QUERY_CONTEXT function provides access to the data of another region on the page. FUNCTIO...

One of the most exciting new features in APEX 19.2 is Faceted Search. Faceted Search (or faceted navigation) is seen pretty often on the internet; typically on shop or sales web sites. The end user can set filters using Facets on the left or upper side of the screen. A facet shows possible values together with the occurrence count within the result set. After the end user changed a facet, results, dependent facets and occurrence counts refresh immediately. And you can try that...

It's getting close: In about 5 weeks, the Oracle developer community will meet in Seattle for the annual ODTUG KScope conference. KScope19 will contain over 300 technical sessions, hands-on labs, "Sunday Symposiums", and (of course) networking with Oracle experts from all over the globe. The Oracle APEXdevelopment team will be there, not only with sessions about new features, but also with deep-dive sessions on existing functionality as well. So don't miss this opportunity to...

In the latest Application Express release 19.1, the Data Loading component in SQL Workshop has been dramatically improved. Not only CSV files, but also JSON, XML and XLSX files can be loaded into tables in the APEX workspace. However, some readers might already have noticed, that the new Data Loading wizard can only load into new tables. To accommodate SQL Workshop users needing to load data into existing tables, the functionality from previous APEX versions is still...

by Andreea Dobre, Oracle Romania in Bucharest, and Carsten Czarski, Oracle Application Express Development team. One of the new features of Application Express 19.1 is the new Data Loading wizard, which already has been introduced in the Quick and Easy Data Loading with APEX 19.1 blog posting. But there is more than the new wizard in SQL Workshop - the new APEX_DATA_PARSER PL/SQL package provides a nice and easy developer interface to parse files.  The APEX_DATA_PARSER...

The latest Application Express Release 19.1 takes its support for external data sources (REST Services and REST Enabled SQL) to the next level. Forms do now support REST services and REST Enabled SQL declaratively. Thus APEX allows to create report, chart and form pages on REST services - all declarative and without manual coding. This blog posting shows, how it works. Prerequisites I: Create a table and load sample data First, we need a REST service, to create the APEX...

Starting with APEX 18.1, some significant changes where introduced on how APEX components (report, charts, calendar and others) get data. In earlier versions, each component generated their own SQL query. That was fine as long as APEX only worked with data in the local database. However, with the requirement to support external data sources like REST (Web Source Modules) or REST Enabled SQL, components cannot generate their own SQL any more. An example: End users view an...