Which APEX am I logging into?

I’ve got two computers at home both running APEX, and when I log into APEX the page looks exactly the same – except for the IP address in the URL, which is just slightly different. If you’re forgetful like me it’s easy to confuse which machine I’m logged in to. Here’s a tip:

Login to apex_admin on each machine in turn and click Manage Service, then Messages. Then select a Custom Message for the Login Message and/or a System Message, and enter the name of the machine, or some other message that will remind you which machine it is. The message will be shown whenever you see the login screen, and when you login to APEX.

If you find the text isn’t visible enough, you can insert HTML into the message, e.g. <B>Development</B>.

APEX 3.0 via Embedded PL/SQL Gateway

I managed to get APEX 3.0 working on Oracle 10.2.0.1 using the embedded PL/SQL gateway (i.e. without installing Apache), contrary to the advice given here. I used apex_epg_config instead of apex_epg_config11. For it to work, however, I had to remove some security on XDB so it’s not a recommended option. This involved modifying my xdbconfig.xml to allow anonymous access to XDB using this:

DECLARE
  configxml SYS.XMLType;
BEGIN
  SELECT INSERTCHILDXML(xdburitype('/xdbconfig.xml').getXML(),
         '/xdbconfig/sysconfig/protocolconfig/httpconfig',
         'allow-repository-anonymous-access',
         XMLType('true'),
         'xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/xdb/xdbconfig.xsd"')
  INTO configxml FROM DUAL;
  DBMS_XDB.cfg_update(configxml);
END;
/

Now for some general tips:

Tip #1. List Your DAD Authorizations

As described so well in the excellent article DBMS_EPG – The Embedded PL/SQL Gateway in Oracle 10g Database Release 2, you can authorize and deauthorize a DAD using the DBMS_EPG package. It should be noted that dropping a DAD will not remove the authorizations as well, so you need to deauthorize it as well. To find out what authorizations have been made on your database, you can query the DBA_EPG_DAD_AUTHORIZATION view, e.g.:

SQL> select * from dba_epg_dad_authorization;

DAD_NAME USERNAME
-------- ---------
APEX     ANONYMOUS

1 row selected.

There’s also a USER_EPG_DAD_AUTHORIZATION view which shows the DAD_NAME for authorized DADs for the current user.

Tip #2. List Your DADS

You can find out what DADs have been set up on your instance using the DBMS_EPG package. There is a bug, however, that causes dbms_epg.get_all_dad_attributes to return nothing, so this script gets each attribute separately with dbms_epg.get_dad_attribute. The script lists all the DADS, their mappings and their attributes.

set serveroutput on

PROMPT list all dads
declare
  blank       dbms_epg.varchar2_table;
  dad_names   dbms_epg.varchar2_table;
  paths       dbms_epg.varchar2_table;
  procedure show_dad_attribute(dad in varchar2, attr in varchar2) is
    val varchar2(4000);
  begin
    val := dbms_epg.get_dad_attribute(dad, attr);
    if val is not null then
      dbms_output.put_line('... ' || attr || '=' || val);
    end if;
  end;
begin
  dbms_epg.get_dad_list(dad_names);
  if dad_names.count > 0 then
    for i in dad_names.first..dad_names.last loop
      dbms_output.put_line(dad_names(i));
      paths := blank;
      dbms_epg.get_all_dad_mappings(dad_names(i), paths);
      if paths.count > 0 then
        for j in paths.first..paths.last loop
          dbms_output.put_line('... path=' || paths(j));
        end loop;
      else
        dbms_output.put_line('... No mappings found');
      end if;
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'after-procedure');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'always-describe-procedure');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'authentication-mode');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'before-procedure');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'bind-bucket-lengths');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'bind-bucket-widths');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'cgi-environment-list');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'compatibility-mode');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'database-username');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'default-page');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'document-path');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'document-procedure');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'document-table-name');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'error-style');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'exclusion-list');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'fetch-buffer-size');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'input-filter-enable');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'info-logging');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'owa-debug-enable');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'max-requests-per-session');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'nls-language');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'path-alias');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'path-alias-procedure');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'request-validation-function');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'session-cookie-name');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'session-state-management');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'transfer-mode');
      show_dad_attribute(dad_names(i),'upload-as-long-raw');
    end loop;
  else
    dbms_output.put_line('No dads found');
  end if;
end;
/

When the above script is run, you’ll get something like this:

APEX
... path=/apex/*
... authentication-mode=Basic
... database-username=ANONYMOUS
... default-page=apex
... document-path=docs
... document-procedure=wwv_flow_file_mgr.process_download
... document-table-name=wwv_flow_file_objects$
... nls-language=american_america.al32utf8
... request-validation-function=wwv_flow_epg_include_modules.authorize