TAPI and XAPI articles

Articles relating to Table APIs and Transaction APIs

  • Interactive Grids (APEX 5.1 EA) and TAPIs (30 Jun 2016) - DISCLAIMER: this article is based on Early Adopter 1. I’ve finally got back to looking at my reference TAPI APEX application. I’ve greatly simplified it (e.g. removed the dependency on Logger, much as I wanted to keep it) and included one dependency (CSV_UTIL_PKG) to make it much simpler to install and try. The notice about […]
  • APEX API for Tabular Forms (16 Feb 2016) - Ever since I started exploring the idea of using a TAPI approach with APEX, something I was never quite satisfied with was Tabular Forms. They can be a bit finicky to work with, and if you’re not careful you can break them to the point where it’s easier to recreate them from scratch rather than […]
  • Dumb triggers? Let’s make ’em a bit smarter (15 Feb 2016) - Some time back, Connor rightly pointed out that triggers that modify data can get in the way when you need to do out-of-the-ordinary data maintenance, e.g. when you need to fix up a row here or re-insert a row over there. You can’t just disable the trigger or else make your users suffer down-time. Now, […]
  • APEX API – call a package for all your DML (12 Feb 2016) - If you create an APEX form based on a table, APEX automatically creates processes of type Automatic Row Fetch and Automatic Row Processing (DML) as well as one item for each column in the table, each bound to the database column via its Source Type. This design is excellent as it’s fully declarative and is […]
  • TAPI Generator MkII (11 Feb 2016) - The last few weeks I’ve made quite a few improvements to my TAPI generator which I thought I’d share. I’ve also added an Apex API generator which generates code suitable for interfacing between simple Apex applications and my TAPIs. This reduces the volume of PL/SQL required within Apex to a bare minimum. Templates are now […]
  • Sample TAPI APEX Application (14 Nov 2014) - If you attended my presentation at AUSOUG Perth earlier this month, or if you’ve had a peek at the slides, you may be interested in a more concrete demonstration of the ideas presented. So if you’d like to install and play with a sample application that includes a TAPI generator, feel free to download this (EDIT: updated, see […]
  • Build your APEX application better – do less in APEX (13 Feb 2014) - I recently saw this approach used in a complex Apex application built for my current client, and I liked what I saw – so I used a similar one in another project of mine, with good results. Pages load and process faster Less PL/SQL compilation at runtime Code is more maintainable and reusable Database object […]
  • TAPI vs. XAPI (23 Jun 2010) - I just wanted to bring attention to some very interesting discussion (that’s been going on for years now) regarding Table APIs (TAPI) versus Transactional APIs (XAPI). Some very nice answers, as well as a bit of controversy 🙂 “Understanding the differences between Table and Transaction API’s” (Stackoverflow) “Considering SQL as a Service” (AskTom) Business Logic […]