Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
current application. Using the Interactive Report Capabilities, you can filter the debug views to display
only the ones you're interested in.
Drilling down will take you to the detail report, this time without the histogram across the top. Apart
from this small change, all of the data is the same that you would see via the Developer Toolbar.
Navigation in this version of the report is slightly different. Here you would use the APEX
breadcrumbs to navigate between the Debug and Debug Message Data pages to select the desired views
as shown in Figure 6-14.
Figure 6-14.
Breadcrumbs for the Debug Messages utilities
Another change to the utilities based Debug view is the addition of the Purge Debug Messages
button. This button allows both workspace administrators and developers to purge underlying debug
data
for the currently selected application
based on certain criteria. The available criteria are
Purge all messages
: This option will purge all data for the selected app that currently resides in the
underlying debug tables.
Purge messages by age
: This option allows you to select a time frame for which to purge, from 1 day
to 4 weeks.
Purge current session messages
: This option allows the purge of messages for the currently active
user session.
Purge by View Identifier:
This option allows the purge of messages related to a specific View ID.
Caution
When purging data be aware of what other developers are working on within the workspace and
application. It is possible to accidently purge data that may be important to other developers.
Benefits of Debug Mode
There are a few benefits to Debug mode that are worth mentioning, as they help make debugging some
of the more complex pieces of APEX a little easier. These benefits are particularly apparent when
working with graphs and charts, or when developing interactive reports.
Graphs and Charts
APEX 4 uses AnyChart 5.1 (http://www.anychart.com) as its graphing and charting engine. While the
APEX team has done a wonderful job of hiding the behind-the-scenes complexity of how charting works,
there are times when you may need to dig into the details of how charts are being rendered.
As you learned in chapter 2, everything you change on the Chart Attributes page of a given chart's
definition ends up creating an XML document that determines how the chart will be drawn. You can, if
you wish, edit the XML manually to make changes that are not available via the Chart Attribute options.
