Duncan Mein's Blog

I noticed in one of the comments of Dimitri Gielis articles that Jornica pointed out a script called apxXEpwd.sql I ran this as the SYS user and sure enough, it allows you to reset the ADMIN password for the internal workspace. This script can be found in the root apex directory that you download from OTN. Very useful when you forget what that password is!

I will be honest and admit that I have not been SQL Developers biggest fan since it's release a few years ago. Having always used 3rd party products such as TOAD and PL/SQL Developer, I found certain things a little irritating and not overwhelmingly obvious when forced to use SQL Developer. Recently however, I found an absolute god send of a feature in SQL Developer and that was the ability to import / export APEX applications. This means that the Web GUI for such actions is no longer required. Very simply, you connect to your parsing schema's database account via SQL Developer, right click on the Application Express tree directory and select Import Application. This opens a simple wizard and off you go. One other cool feature of this is that you can open the details window and see exactly what your import is doing, something that is not possible when using the web GUI. Download SQL Developer from: OTN

Just upgraded from APEX 3.1 to 3.1.1 on an Oracle Enterpise Linux 4 Update 4 platform. Intall took: 5:39 and termintaed without error. The patch can be downloaded from metalink (patch number 7032837) All in all, a very simple upgrade and now onto the task of regression testing our current 3.1 apps

One of the really nice features of APEX is the ability to hide / show regions when editing item or page attributes. This is really useful if you have to update the same attribute for multiple items. If you want to implement this type of approach on a page you simply need to: Create a New Region Template Either create a new region template (or copy an existing one) and add a DIV tag with the id="XXX#REGION_STATIC_ID#" around the Definition Template. Don’t forget to close the DIV at the end of the template. In this example I copied our region called “Reports Region” and named it “Reports Region 680 Width (Static ID)” Add the following JavaScript to your Page Header: view Create several regions on your page and assign a unique Static ID i.e. REGION1, REGION2 etc. Set the Region Template to the one you created in the 1. Create a button for each Region you defined in the previous stage and add the following JavaScript call as the URL target of each button: javascript:hideDiv(‘XXXR

To set the TAB order of your form, you simply need to add the attribute: TABINDEX="1" to the "HTML Form Element Attributes" of your items replacing the number with the desired sequence. This is a great way of enhancing the usability of your forms.

I have just been reading the Apex 3.1 API documentation and noticed that the JavaScript API that are commonly used in Apex are now documented: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E10513_01/doc/appdev.310/e10499/api.htm#CHDBJJDC There is some very useful stuff in there!!

If you have been using Interactive Reports since Apex 3.1 landed, you are probably as impressed with them as I am. The other day I tried to create more than 1 IR on a page and the Wizard prevented me saying "Only 1 Interactive Report can be declared on this page" I then tired to copy a region that contained an Interactive Report and sure enough I suddenly had 2 IR's on the one page! Whilst this is probably not supported or suggested, my requirement meant that only 1 IR was to be shown at once (i.e. I had a conditional diaply on both IR) So if you need to create multiple IR's on the one page but will only display one at run time, copy of a region appears to work!