Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 3-3.
TICKET DETAIL Attributes
Attribute Name
Type of Data
Comment
Ticket Details ID
Number
A unique way to identify this detail entry
Ticket ID
Number
Which ticket this detail is linked to
Details
Text
A text description of any details entered by the technician
Created By
Text
The user who logged the ticket
Created On
Date
The date the user created the ticket
Although it's good to try to be as detailed as possible as early as you can, you don't have to be perfect here.
You can always go back and alter or expand the data you wish to capture as you identify other potential attributes.
System Design with APEX in Mind
Because APEX not only resides in but is built on the Oracle database, you would think that designing database objects
for APEX would be the same as designing for any other system that uses Oracle as a data store—and in some aspects
you would be right. However, there are definitely some things you need to understand when designing for an APEX
system that will make your life much easier.
Most of what you do with APEX, at least initially, uses a series of wizards. If the database objects are designed
with APEX in mind, the wizards will do far more work for you; therefore, you'll need to do far less fine tuning
manually. The following sections discuss the most important design considerations and how they affect what the
wizards do for you.
Table Definition and User Interface Defaults
One such area you see in more detail later is user-interface defaults (UI Defaults). It's important to know that when
you use UI Defaults, certain table attributes are translated into default settings used across APEX. Here are some of the
more far-reaching things you can do at the table level to help make UI Defaults more useful:
•
Placing comments on a table column seeds that item's UI Default help text with the text of the
comment.
NOT NULL
at the database level triggers a Required flag to be set in the UI
•
Marking a column as
Defaults.
•
Date
and
Timestamp
data types are set up to display as Date Pickers on input forms.
•
The order in which the columns appear in the table is the default order in which the UI
Defaults set them to display on a form or report.
BLOB
sets the form-level UI Defaults to use APEX's declarative blob
•
Defining a column as a
functionality.
You set up and modify UI Defaults in a later chapter so you can see for yourself how design decisions affect the
way UI Defaults are set up.
