Understanding the Installation Process

1.2 Understanding the Installation Process

An overview of the Oracle Application Express installation process.

About Planning Your Installation
Oracle recommends you take the time to carefully plan your installation.
About Patch Sets and Point Releases
Patch sets provide bug fixes only. A point release includes bug fixes and incorporates all current patch sets.
About the Installation Process
You can install Oracle Application Express or update from previous release using the same installation procedure and the installation scripts.
About Accessing Oracle Application Express
You access the Oracle Application Express development environment, by signing in to a shared work area called a workspace.
Signing In When Workspace Requests Is Enabled
Signing into a workspace requires you first request a workspace and then sign into it.

1.2.1 About Planning Your Installation

Oracle recommends you take the time to carefully plan your installation.

The installation process involves the following steps:

Plan your installation: During the planning phase, you should determine whether to install a full development environment or runtime environment. A full development environment provides complete access to the App Builder development environment to develop applications. A runtime environment is an appropriate choice for production implementations in which you want to run applications that cannot be modified.

You should also determine which Web listener to use. Available options include the Oracle REST Data Services, Embedded PL/SQL Gateway, or Oracle HTTP Server and mod_plsql.
Verify installation requirements: the minimum requirements that your system must meet before you install the software.
Install the software: The required installation steps depend upon which Web listener you decide to use.

1.2.2 About Patch Sets and Point Releases

Patch sets provide bug fixes only. A point release includes bug fixes and incorporates all current patch sets.

Patch sets are a mechanism for delivering fully tested and integrated product fixes. Patch sets provide bug fixes only. Patch sets typically do not include new functionality and they do not require certification on the target system. Patch sets include all of the libraries that have been rebuilt to implement the bug fixes in the set. All of the fixes in the patch set have been tested and are certified to work with each other.

In between major product releases, Oracle may offer a point release. A point release (for example Oracle Application Express release 5.0.3) includes bug fixes and incorporates all current patch sets. Typically, point releases do not introduce new functionality.

1.2.3 About the Installation Process

You can install Oracle Application Express or update from previous release using the same installation procedure and the installation scripts.

The installation script checks for the latest existing Oracle Application Express schema and automatically copies the instance metadata, workspaces, and applications from the previous schema into the current schema. The original schema associated with the previous release is left completely unaltered. Following best practices, Oracle recommends that you create new tablespaces for a new release of Oracle Application Express and follow the appropriate installation instructions as outlined in this document.

Parent topic: Understanding the Installation Process

1.2.4 About Accessing Oracle Application Express

You access the Oracle Application Express development environment, by signing in to a shared work area called a workspace.

How you sign in and access Oracle Application Express depends upon your user role.

A workspace enables multiple users to work within the same Oracle Application Express installation while keeping their objects, data, and applications private. Each workspace has a unique ID and name. An instance administrator can create a workspace manually within Oracle Application Express Administration Services or have users submit requests. Oracle Application Express Administration Services is a separate application for managing an entire Oracle Application Express instance.

Users are divided into four primary roles:

Instance administrators are superusers that manage an entire hosted instance using a separate application called Oracle Application Express Administration Services. Instance administrators manage workspace provisioning, configure features and instance settings, and manage security.
Workspace administrators can perform administrator tasks specific to a workspace such as configuring workspace preferences, managing user accounts, monitoring workspace activity, and viewing log files.
Developers are users who sign in to a workspace and create and edit applications.
End users can only run existing database or Websheet applications.

If you are a developer, an administrator must grant you access to shared work area called a workspace. If you are an Instance administrator, you must sign in to Oracle Application Express Administration Services, determine whether to specify a provisioning mode, create a workspace, and then sign in to that workspace.

About Specifying a Provisioning Mode

The Instance administrator determines how the process of provisioning (or creating) a workspace works for a specific Oracle Application Express instance. To determine how provisioning works, an Instance Administrator selects one of the following options on the Instance Settings page:

Manual - In this mode, an Instance administrator creates new workspaces and notifies the Workspace administrator of the login icon.
Request - Users request workspaces directly in a self-service fashion. Users click a link on the login page to access a request form. After the workspace request has been granted, users are automatically emailed the appropriate login information.
Request with Email Verification - In this mode, users request workspaces directly by clicking a link on the login page to access a request form. Each user receives an initial email containing a verification link. Clicking this link validates the user's email address and then the request is processed. Then another email is sent to the user containing login credentials (that is, the workspace name, username, and password).

About Creating Workspaces and Users

Before you can develop or install applications, an administrator must create a workspace and add Oracle Application Express users. To learn more contact your administrator, or see the “Creating a Workspace and Adding Oracle Application Express Users” section for your Web listener in this document.