An Introduction to APEX 4.2 - Beginning Oracle Application Express 4.2 - page 7

The goal of this topic is to get you started using APEX, to launch you in a way that en-
ables you to grow toward mastery of the product. To begin, you need three things: ac-
cess to an APEX instance, access to a web browser, and a copy of SQL Developer.

Access to an APEX Instance

This is definitely a hands-on topic, so to work through the examples and exercises you
need access to an instance of APEX 4.2. There are a number of different ways you can
access APEX; depending on your level of comfort and expertise with Oracle, some
may be better for you than others. Here is a description of the three most common
scenarios:

• By far the easiest is to sign up for an account on Oracle's hosted version

of APEX at https://apex.oracle.com . It's free for nonproduction
applications and is a great place to get started, because you don't have to
worry about installing either the database or APEX.

• If you already have an Oracle database installed locally, you can download

and install APEX 4.2 into that instance. Simply go to the Oracle APEX
home page at http://otn.oracle.com/apex and download the
latest version of the software.

• If you don't have an Oracle database already but would like to install

one locally, you can download a free developer's license version of the
database from Oracle Technology Network (OTN) at ht-
tp://otn.oracle.com/database . Both Oracle 10g and 11g run
APEX 4.2. Oracle 11g even allows you to install APEX (albeit an earlier
version) as an option in the database install.

Although having a locally accessible instance of the Oracle database gives you more
direct access to the data, it's definitely not necessary to complete the exercises in this
topic. All code and instructions have been written so that they can be completed on
Oracle's hosted instance with no special access required.

Note Oracle provides very good documentation on the installation process for both
the database and APEX, so it isn't covered in detail here. However, if you're planning to
install APEX on an environment in your organization, you should coordinate with the
database administrator responsible for that instance to ensure that no mishaps occur.