5 About Deploying Your Application

This section provides basic information about deploying your Oracle Application Express application. It also shows you how to create end users and determine the URL of your application.

Topics:

Overview of Deploying Your Application
Creating Users
About Publishing the Application URL

5.1 Overview of Deploying Your Application

After building your application in your development environment, you must deploy it so that end users can begin using it. Deploying involves the following steps:

Collect your supporting object definitions (CREATE object statements, sample data, images, files, and so on). Review the Database Object Dependencies report to determine which supporting objects to move. See "Viewing Application Utilities and Reports" in Oracle Application Express Application Builder User's Guide.
Define your supporting objects. This includes the object definitions you collected in the previous step and other supporting objects, such as messages and prerequisites.
Export the application with its supporting objects.
Import and install the exported files.

Using Oracle Application Express greatly simplifies the deployment process. It enables you to migrate the application definition, associated files, and all supporting objects in only a few steps.

5.2 Creating Users

After moving your application to a production environment, you must create user accounts within Oracle Application Express for your end users.

Note:

For the following procedure, you need workspace administrator privileges.

To create user accounts:

Navigate to the Workspace home page.
Click Administration.
Click Manage Users and Groups.

(This icon appears only if you have workspace administrator privileges.)
Click Create User.

The Create User page appears.

Description of the illustration deploy_cr_enduser.gif
Under User Identification:
1. Username - Enter the username used to log in to the system. Restrictions are:
  - Maximum length of 100 characters
  - No spaces
  - Only these special characters are permitted: ampersand (@) and period (.)
2. Email Address - Enter the email address for this user.
3. First Name - (Optional) Enter the first or given name to further identify the user.
4. Last Name - (Optional) Enter the last or family name to further identify the user.
5. Description - (Optional) Enter comments about this user.
6. Default Date Format - Specify the default Oracle date format for the user. This specification controls the default date format within SQL Workshop.
Under Account Privileges:
1. Default Schema - Specify the default schema used for data browsing, application creation, and SQL script execution.
  
  When using workspaces that has multiple schemas available, this schema is the default. This setting does not control security, only the user's preference.
2. Accessible Schemas (null for all) - Leave this blank to enable the end user to access all schemas associated with the workspace.
3. User is a workspace administrator - Specify if this user should have workspace administrator privileges.
  
  Administrators have access to all components. Additionally, they can manage user accounts, groups, and development services. Components may not be available if they are switched off by Instance Administrators.
4. User is a developer - Specify if this user should have developer privileges.
  
  Developers must have access to either Application Builder, SQL Workshop, or both. Components may not be available if they are switched off by Instance Administrators.
5. Application Builder Access - Determines whether a developer has access to the Application Builder.
6. SQL Workshop Access - Determines whether a developer has access to the SQL Workshop.
7. Team Development Access - Determines whether a developer has access to the Team Development.
8. Set Account Availability - Select Locked to prevent the account from being used. Select Unlocked to allow the account to be used.
Under Password:
- Password - Enter a case sensitive password.
- Confirm Password - Enter the password again.
- Require Change of Password On First Use:
  - To require the user to change the password immediately after logging in the first time, select Yes.
  - To keep user from having to change the password immediately after logging in the first time, select No.
Under User Groups, optionally select a user group.
Click Create User or Create and Create Another.

This message appears: "User created."

5.3 About Publishing the Application URL

After deploying your application, you must publish its URL so end users know how to access it.

To determine the URL:

Log in to Oracle Application Express in the production environment.
Select Application Builder.
Select the application.
On the Application home page, position the mouse over Run Application.
Note the URL that displays in the status bar at the bottom of the page.

For example:

http://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=11563:1:3397731373043366363

Where:

apex.oracle.com is the URL of the server.
pls is the indicator to use the mod_plsql.
apex is the database access descriptor (DAD) name. The DAD describes how Oracle HTTP Server connects to the database server so that it can fulfill an HTTP request. The default value is apex.
f?p= is a prefix used by Oracle Application Express.
11563 is the application being called.
1 is the page within the application to be displayed.
3397731373043366363 is the session number, which is unique for every user's access to the application. Do not include a session number in the URL that you give to end users.

To run this example application, you would go to this URL:

http://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=11563:1