Database Reference
In-Depth Information
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TOAD for Oracle
: TOAD(which originally stood for Tool for Oracle Ap-
plication Development) is a tool written and distributed by Dell's software
division (formally Quest Software). Although it can do a lot more, the
schema-comparison tool that's available as part of the DB Admin module
is quite sophisticated and will generate very clean and accurate scripts.
Whichever tool you use, the output is a script that, when run against the production
environment, executes the required DDL to alter the underlying database objects and
bring them in line with what was created in your development environment.
However, none of these tools take into account the data that may reside in the tables
that are being altered. Be very careful before you implement any of the generated up-
grade scripts, understand what they may do to the underlying data, and mitigate any
risks of data loss or corruption.
This subject is huge and is beyond the scope of this topic. There is no automated
solution to the problem of data migration between versions. More often than not, it
boils down to handwritten scripts and heavy testing.
APEX-Based Files
APEX provides the ability for developers to upload static files into the APEX metadata
repository as part of an application's shared components.
Figure 10-6
shows the Files
section of the shared components page. The three types of files that are supported are
CSS, images, and static files. Let's talk about each of these file types.
Figure 10-6.
The Files section of an application's shared components
