About Product Portal Sample Database Application

This section describes the sample database application, Product Portal. This sample application features an easy-to-use interface for viewing, updating, and searching order and customer information for clothing products. Users can navigate among the pages using the Home, Customers, Products, Orders, and Reports tabs.

Topics:

• Running Product Portal

• Understanding Product Portal

• Viewing Pages in Printer Friendly Mode

• Modifying Product Portal

Running Product Portal

To run Product Portal:

1. Log in to Oracle Application Express.

   The Workspace home page.

2. Click the Application Builder icon.

   The Application Builder home page appears.

3. Select Product Portal.

4. Click the Run Application icon.

5. Enter the following credentials:

   • Username - Enter your workspace username.

   • Password - Enter your workspace password.

6. Click Login.

   The home page appears.

Understanding Product Portal

Product Portal demonstrates the following functionality:

• Examples of ways to display summary information, including a dial chart and summary reports

• Reports for viewing, updating, and adding customers, products, and orders

• Flash charts and maps available in Oracle Application Express

• A Calendar report

• Printer friendly mode

The following sections describe specific functionality available on each page.

Topics:

• About the Home Page

• About the Customers Page

• About the Products Page

• About the Orders Page

• About the Reports Page

See Also:

"What Is a Page?"

About the Home Page

Description of the illustration sampl_app_plain.gif

The Home page contains four main regions:

• Sales Quota for this Month

• Top Customers

• Top Products

• Top Orders by Date

Sales Quota for this Month demonstrates the use of a Flash Dial chart. This chart displays a value based on an underlying SQL statement. Although not demonstrated in this example, you can enable an asynchronous refresh by editing the attributes of a Flash chart.

Top Customers is a report based on a SQL query and displays a subset of the information that appears on the Customers page. Users can link to additional details by clicking the customer name or by clicking the View Customer icon (a right arrow) in the upper right corner of the region.

Top Products is also a report based on an SQL query. This report displays a subset of the information that displays on the Products page. Users can link to product details by clicking the product name or by clicking the View Products icon in the upper right corner of the region.

Top Orders by Date displays orders by date and order amount. Users can view the Orders page by clicking the right arrow in the upper right corner.

Sample Database Application is a simple HTML region that displays static text. You can create this type of region to display explanatory information to users.

Tasks contains a list with links to other pages within the application. Links available on the Home page Tasks list include:

• Enter a New Order links to a wizard for creating a new order.

• Add a New Customer links to a form for entering new customer information.

• Add a New Product links to a form for adding new products.

See Also:

"Creating Charts", "Creating a Region", and "Creating Lists"

About the Customers Page

The Customers page enables users to view and edit customer information.

Description of the illustration customer.gif

Customers is an interactive report for tracking customer information. To search for a customer, enter a customer name in the Search field and click Go. To sort by customer name, click the column heading and then select the Up or Down arrow to sort in ascending or descending mode.

You can change the appearance of the report using the Actions menu. To update existing customer information, click the Edit icon. To add a new customer, click the Create Customer button. To upload data, click the Upload Data button.

About the Products Page

The Products page enables users to view and edit product information. The Products page consists of two main regions:

• Products

• Top 5 Products

Products displays product information. This region is based on a SQL query that uses a custom function for displaying images stored in the database.

Description of the illustration products.gif

By default, this page display in Icon view. To edit product information in Icon view, click an image.

To view the information in a report format, click the View Report icon to the right of the Go button. In Report view, you can sort by product category by clicking the column heading and then selecting the Up or Down arrow to sort in ascending or descending mode. Users can change the appearance of the report using the Actions menu. To edit a product description, click the Edit icon. To add a new product, click the Create Product button at the top of the page.

Top 5 Products is also a SQL report. This report outlines the top five products based on quantities sold.

Description of the illustration products_top.gif

About the Orders Page

The Orders page enables users to view and edit customer orders.

Description of the illustration orders.gif

My Orders is an interactive report for tracking order information. To sort by column, click the column heading and then select the Up or Down arrow to sort in ascending or descending mode.

You can change the appearance of the report using the Actions menu. To view orders in a calendar, click Order Calendar. The Order Calendar appears. In the Order Calendar, you can link to a specific order, by clicking a calendar entry. To update existing customer information, click the Edit icon. To add a new order, click the Enter New Order button.

About the Reports Page

Description of the illustration reports_pg.gif

The Reports page enables you to view information in various formats, including bar chart, cluster bar, pie chart, map, and tree. To change the view, make a selection under Reports on the right side of the page.

See Also:

"Creating Maps", "Creating Charts", "Creating Trees"

Viewing Pages in Printer Friendly Mode

Clicking Print in the upper left corner of the page displays the current page in Printer Friendly mode. When in Printer Friendly mode, the Application Express engine displays all text within the HTML form fields as text.

To enable your application to display in Printer Friendly mode, you must create and then specify a Print Mode Page Template on the Edit Application page.

See Also:

"Optimizing a Page for Printing"

Modifying Product Portal

Once you understand the type of functionality available in a sample application, the next step is to learn more about the construction of each page. An efficient way to speed up the learning process is to analyze and deconstruct the pages in the demonstration applications. If you happen to break something, you can quickly delete the demonstration application and install it again. See "Updating a Previously Installed Sample Database Application".

You edit existing pages in an application, add pages to an application, or create entirely new applications using Application Builder.

Topics:

• About the Developer Toolbar

• Editing Product Portal

See Also:

Oracle Database 2 Day + Application Express Developer's Guide for an introduction to building database application

About the Developer Toolbar

The Developer toolbar is a quick way to edit the current application, the current running page, create a new page, control, or component, view session state, or turn edit links on or off.

See Also:

"About the Developer Toolbar"

Description of the illustration d_toolbar_149.gif

The Developer toolbar consists of the following links:

• Home links you to the Workspace home page. See "About the Workspace Home Page".

• Application ID links you to the Application home page. See "About the Application Home Page".

• Edit Page accesses the Page Definition for the current running page. See "About the Page Definition".

• Create links to a wizard for creating a page, region, page control (item, button, branch, computation, process, or validation), or a shared control (navigation bar icon, tab, list of values, list, or breadcrumb). See "About Database Applications".

• Session links you to session state information for the current page. See "Viewing Session State".

• Caching links to the Caching page. See "Managing Cached Regions".

• View Debug displays the Debug window. See "Accessing Debugging Mode".

• Debug toggles the page between Debug and No Debug mode. See "Accessing Debugging Mode".

• Show Edit Links toggles between Show Edit Links and Hide Edit Links. Clicking Show Edit Links displays a small orange icon next to each editable object on the page. Each icon is orange and contains a triangle with two rules beneath it. Clicking the link displays another window in which to edit the object.

Editing Product Portal

To edit a running application, click Application on the Developer toolbar. The Application home page appears. The application ID and application name display at the top of the page.

Description of the illustration bldr_hm_top.gif

You can run the current application, edit supporting objects, create shared components, or export and import information by clicking one of the following:

• Run Application submits the pages in the current application to the Application Express engine to render viewable HTML. See "How the Application Express Engine Renders and Processes Pages".

• Supporting Objects links to the Supporting Objects page. See "How to Create a Packaged Application".

• Shared Components links to a list of shared components and user interface controls that can display or be applied on every page within an application. See "Working with Shared Components".

• Utilities links to the Utilities page. Use this page to monitor developer activity, view dashboards, run Advisor, and view numerous other reports. See "Using Application Builder Utilities".

• Export/Import links you to the Export/Import Wizard. Use this wizard to import and export an entire application and related files such as cascading style sheets, images, static files, script files, themes, user interface defaults, and workspace users. See "Exporting an Application and Related Files".

The pages that comprise the application appear on the Application home page. To access a specific page, simply click it. To search for a specific page, enter a case insensitive query for the page title or page number in the Page field and click Go.

See Also:

"About the Application Home Page" and "About the Page Definition"