On the 22nd of May, Oracle released version 3.1.1 of Application Express to the public. Lots of new and interesting features come loaded into this version of APEX, below are some of the key features and improvements, specifically for using APEX in combination with Oracle XE:

(quoting Oracle here!)

1. Can be installed directly into Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE).
2. Supports the migration from Oracle Database XE to Oracle Database Standard Edition or Oracle Database Enterprise Edition.
3. Supports direct integration with Oracle SQL Developer 1.2.1 and above.
4. Includes a supported configuration of Apache FOP to use as your report server for PDF region printing.
5. Interactive Reporting provides substantial “out of the box” capabilities to build customizable end-user reports.
6. Declarative BLOB support enable files to be declaratively uploaded in forms, and downloaded or displayed using reports. BLOB display and download can also be authored procedurally using PL/SQL.
7. Ability to develop Custom Themes and then publish them to ensure consistent look and feel matching your organizations’ standards.
8. Compressed JavaScript files for improved page load time and performance, together with Theme 19 specifically designed for mobile applications.
9. The framework has also been improved to allow advanced Oracle Application Express developers to build and leverage custom Web 2.0 capabilities.
10. You can define an application date format that will be picked up by all date report and form items when displaying dates.
11. New hidden and protected item type to protect item session state and ehanced Built-in Page process type (DML Operations) to negate possible SQL injection attacks.
12. Corrects a number of issues, making this our most secure and stable release to date.

(end of quote)

APEX is rapidly evolving to a real ‘hot’ topic among Oracle developers, traditional and modern (ie. Java/J2EE) alike, because it allows for fast and easy development and deployment of slick web applications, with all current features and possibilities available and based on the rock-solid foundation of the Oracle Database.

This means that Oracle developers can rely on their knowledge of the Entity Relational World and can start building modern web applications with all the bells and whistles of modern-days web possibilities, without the effort of first having to learn a ton of Java/J2EE stuff.

Oracle XE normally comes fitted with an APEX 2.x instance so if you want to profit from all the new features of the latest release, you’ll have to upgrade. Luckily, the process of upgrading is not too complex and only a few steps are necessary to accomplish this task:

1. Download the latest release from the Oracle web site
2. Extract the downloaded archive
3. Run the necessary scripts for upgrading
4. Start using APEX 3.1.1 to build applications!

1. Download the latest release from the Oracle site
You can find the software through the following link:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/download.html
Please note that you’ll need a registered account at Oracle for this. Registration is free and (in my modest opinion) a must for every Oracle adept. You can register for an account at the Oracle web site (see the top-right part of your screen) or directly at this link.

2. Extract the downloaded archive
You can extract the downloaded archive using an unzip utility on the operating system you are using. In my case - I’m running on Linux - this will be unzip, on Windows you’ll probably be using WinZip or something similar. If possible, try to put the extracted files into a directory on the same machine you are running XE on.

3. Run the necessary scripts for upgrading
Go to the directory where you extracted the APEX archive (in my case this is /root/apex_3.1.1, so substitute your particular directory whereever I am using this path!) and log into the XE instance as SYS/SYSDBA. Then run the following commands/scripts:

@apexins SYSAUX SYSAUX TEMP /i/
@apxldimg /root/apex_3.1.1
@apxxepwd admin

Please note that the last command is to set a password for the APEX admin user, so you can change that to your own password if you like. Furthermore, you’ll loose some of the functionality provided in the APEX version that originally came with XE, take a look at this page for more information on that topic.

In my case, the upgrade took about 15 minutes to complete and the new APEX ran succesfully at the first attempt.

4. Start using APEX 3.1.1 to build applications!
Happy APEX’ing!

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