Database Reference
In-Depth Information
External files : Your application may access files that don't reside in the
APEX repository. For instance, your company may have a common set of
CSS and image files that are used by several web sites to maintain a stand-
ard look and feel.
Database objects : These include all the tables, views, PL/SQL objects, and
any other database objects used by your application. Most of the time, these
reside in your application's “parse as” schema.
APEX-based files : These are files that have been uploaded into the Files
section of an application's supporting objects. They may include images,
CSS, JavaScript, static files, and so on, and are stored in the APEX reposit-
ory.
APEX application export : This is the core of the APEX application, con-
taining the pages, regions, items, validations, and so on.
When it comes time to deploy an application, each of these types of files needs to be
treated a bit differently. The following sections address each file type and how to ob-
tain the most recent version for migration to an alternate platform. Later, the chapter
discusses using the Supporting Object feature of APEX to bundle the appropriate items
into the application export.
External Files
As mentioned previously, external files exist outside of the APEX metadata repository
and usually outside the Oracle database. In the majority of cases, these files are placed
in a directory structure on the application server that provides the HTTP services for
APEX. Usually they're placed in a directory under the document root (docroot) of the
domain that is servicing APEX requests. Because they exist outside of APEX, they
can't rightly be included in the supporting objects of an application, so need to be
handled separately from the other file types.
You need to keep careful track of what files your application uses and whether those
files have changed during the development of your application. Another area of con-
cern is whether other applications, APEX or otherwise, use these same files.
For instance, version 1 of your application may reference a JavaScript file that is
stored on the application server. During the development of version 2 of the applica-
tion, you may have made changes to that file that need to be moved from the develop-
ment server to QA or production. But what if your colleague is working on another ap-
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