Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
C H A P T E R 5
Visualizing Your Data
One of the key areas in which APEX really shines is its ability to create many different views to visualize
the data in your database. If you have at least one numerical field in your table, you can massage your
data to create vivid pie, doughnut, bar or candlestick charts that are either static or animated. If you have
at least one date or time field in your table, you can magically populate your records on a calendar using
that field. If you have a bunch of sales data, you can display it on top of each country on a beautiful high
resolution map.
The rich platform that is APEX allows you to create (in a matter of minutes) hundreds of new ways to
look at your data—something you wouldn't usually be able to pull off on your own in traditional
programming. (Try writing your own animated chart engine or map renderer!)
The neat thing is that views in APEX are also considered pages, so they conform to the rest of the
APEX architecture, which means you can apply templates, themes, processes, behavior, and so on to
these pages. This chapter focuses on how to set up and use some of the basic views in APEX. By the end
of the chapter, you will have an idea of the different type of views available in APEX.
5-1. Creating a Classic Report
Problem
You have two tables: an employee table and an employee leave table. You need to extract information
from both tables and present it in a static report. In other words, you need to create a tabular read-only
report combining data from multiple tables in the database.
Solution
This solution consists of two steps. You must first create the sample objects (that will be used for the
other recipes in this chapter). After that you will create the report itself.
Step 1: Creating the Sample Objects
The sample objects you will create are the employee and employee leave tables. Execute the code shown
in Listing 5-1 using the SQL Workshop.
