Stage and Publish an Oracle Visual Builder

You can stage and publish visual applications from the Oracle Visual Builder home page.

When you stage a visual application that contains a mobile application, you must create at least one build profile for the mobile application. Otherwise, attempts to stage the visual application fail.

If you build a mobile application in your visual application to create the installation file that installs the mobile application on a device, Oracle Visual Builder deploys your visual application that's in development to stage. To build a mobile application, you create one or more build profiles that sign the mobile application and generate a platform-specific installation file or QR code.

Stage a Visual Application

You can stage unpublished versions of your application at any time from the home page or from the main menu.

Staging your application enables you to test each update to confirm that it behaves as you expect and that no problems were introduced, for example, when you add new features or change your data model. You can distribute the URI of the staged application to team members who can help you test and provide feedback.

To stage your application:

1. On the home page, open the Application Options menu of the application and click Stage.
2. In the Stage Application dialog box, select a database option, and click Stage.

   The first time that you stage your application, you must either start with a clean database for your staged application or copy the data from your development database to the staging database. 

   After the initial staging, each time that you stage your application you must specify how you want to manage the data in the staging database. You can keep the data, replace the data with data from the development database, or delete all data in the database and start with a clean database.

On the home page you can see the status of each version of your application. You can continue to update and stage versions until you are ready to publish. Click Stage in the Status column, and click the link to open the staged application in your browser.

Make a note of the URL of the running application. You can share this URL with team members.

Publish a Visual Application

You can publish a staged version of your application from the home page or from the main menu.

When you publish a staged version of your application, it becomes the live version. If you're updating an earlier version of your application, the previous live version is archived and locked. The URI of your application doesn't change. Only one version of an application can be live at a time, but multiple versions of an application can be staged simultaneously.

To publish your application:

1. On the home page, open the Options menu of the application and select Publish.
2. In the Publish Application dialog box, click Publish to move the staged version of your application to the live server.

   The first time that you publish your application you can choose if you want to copy the data from your staging database to the live database or use a clean database. When you update your application to a new version, you are prompted to decide how you want to manage the data in your live database.

You can run the published application in your browser by clicking Live in the Status column and selecting the link. You can share the URL of the running application with public users.

After you publish a version of an application, it becomes read-only and can no longer be changed. To make changes to the application, you must create a new version.