APEX

Thanks for joining us in the past Office Hour session: Part 4: What's new in Oracle APEX 23.1
Watch the replay of the session: apex.oracle.com/officehours and find below the Q&A for the live session.

• Re. Execution Chains: Can you also show a message to the user that it will be processed in the background?
  Yes, the Execution Chain does have a success message that will get displayed as soon as it has sent the process chain into the background. So to say, the Execution Chain always runs in the foreground as part of your page processing.
• How we can call user credentials that is login by user ? I create an application but when a user register on an application their not able to creat the account on that we are not able to create hire credentials.
  How we can creat a login page and that can be access by their credential.
  please see https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/apex/22.1/htmdb/custom-authentication.html
  you will have to implement your own users table and password management UI pages and custom code to handle the authentication
• Why in 2023 we still have to block the button manually to prevent user to click it multiple times?
  web accessibility standards :)
• Can you cancel the execution while it is running?
  Yes, the package APEX_BACKGROUND does contain an ABORT API.
• Is there a log of executions?
  Yes and now. APEX_APPL_PAGE_BG_PROC_STATUS does contain logging information, but the entries will be deleted as soon as the foreground AND background APEX sessions has been purged.
• When can we expect all or some FOS plugins out of the box in APEX. Especially drag'n'drop, and all things possible with websocket?
  All the FOS plug-ins are being reviewed currently and decided which make it to APEX core. Some features are way off generic functionality and won’t make it to the core, others will be there in the same or similar fashion.
  Even those which are not being part of APEX core, will stay open source plug-ins and being moved to the Oracle GitHub/apex repository.
• What triggers table region refresh on each background process iteration?
  He was probably using the “FOS - Timing Actions” dynamic action plug-in (https://apex.world) or just a setTimeout Javascript which calls which calls the refresh() api of the region.
• Can you provide some sample or "free-to-connect" (open) REST data sources for testing purposes with some interesting data?
  https://www.themoviedb.org/ has an API we use in our Movie Watchlist HOL
  To add on for some additional ones - here is a neat github repo that has a collective list many free to use APIs. You will notice themoviedb in there as Jayson mentioned!
  https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis
• Can be set refreshing of the region dynamically and check condition after each refresh? for example.... when some condition is met then stop refreshing the region.
  The region refresh in my demo was a fully manual JS based setTimeout thing. Of course, this can be done way better in order to to refreshing when things are done.
• I’m assuming that there is probably an APEX view to watch/see the Execution chains?
  Correct. APEX_APPL_PAGE_BG_PROC_STATUS
• Is there an API call to abort a process?
  if a button can be clicked to abort a process.. thennnnnn :)
• In the chain process, serialize execution enabled... if I have 5 process in the chain and for example process n.3 goes on error, the other 2 process are not executed.... right?
  The processes in an execution chain are always executed in sequence. Keep in mind, one chain is just one background process, regardless of the number of child processes. And yes, if one of those processes fails, the following child processes will not be executed.
• I understand that this would work even when you navigate to another page while th background process is being executed? If you jump to another page, you get a pop up notification when it finishes?
  APEX does not contain any notification or progress UI for this today - however: using the new Push Notification you can do that based on the dictionary view reporting on execution status.
  We plan to add native components for notifications or progress reporting in a later release, but there is no ETA yet.
• How the help link is working? I need to use right link or how?
  It will be working when the documentation goes live just before the APEX 23.1 GA
• How you can hide the middle (layout) part of page?
  In Page Designer, select the Utilities button (wrench icon), choose Layout from the menu, and select Two Pane Mode from the sub-menu.
• When background job has finished can it refresh some content on my page?
  Yes, this is possible. Carsten will demo this later when he tries large data load in the background process and shows the result with page refresh after it finishes. And also he is showing this now…
• Is the context sensitive help for the APEX Builder only, or is context sensitive help for APEX applications as well?
  Just for the APEX Builder.
• Does it have to be a Processing Process or can I do the same with DA?
  It’s currently limited to Page Processes. It’s really just an extention to the existing “Invoke API” process type.
• How do I get feedback in APEX when the chain is finished? Do I have to call the table regularly?
  that's one option.. might be a good use for PWA notification, or perhaps an email too
• Was is File Background / Foreground mean? We talking both in the DB, you are not talking about Browser as Foreground?
  Foreground would be while the user waits with a spinner
• Considering background page processes are on a cloned session, how to return a value to a page item?
  That’s not possible, because this woud cause concurrency issues. Keep in mind you could have multiple background processes which are executed.
• Can a Plugin Select List attribute be defined using a SQL query / REST service / etc. (like the Select Lists in any APEX app) in the last version? If not, what are the constraints? Can there be check if needed DB objects are defined and available in the Workspace?
  Plug-in attributes are handled in a more secure way, since they are running in the context of Application Builder, which means a highly privileged user.
  That’s the reason you can choose only a few, secured, attribute types and are not able to base a select list on an arbitrary SQL query or REST api"
  When should we use AJAX vs Background Process? It depends if you want to get back a response from your call. Ajax will timeout if it takes too long. Make no mistake it will still continue, but you will not be able to communicate something back. Background Process provide you a lot of infrastructure to execute something in the background and report back to the user about the current progress.
• I am on APEX 22.1. I do see nothing in plug-ins
  This is about providing extended abilities for you as an APEX developer to create your OWN new plugins
  you can see some great plugins via some google searches “oracle APEX plugin”for example, or via https://apex.world choose(has a plugin sections)
• When an app automatically logs it self out due to time, apex is unable to determine the user.. any help to determine the user in a procedure
  It is timed out. It doesn’t exist anymore.
• I want to implement a feature where a user can only login once...you need to logout before you can login again maybe on a different machine
  APEX 22.1 introduced a feature called “Persistent Authentication”: https://apex.oracle.com/en/platform/features/whats-new-221/ This allows users to opt-in for staying signed in. APEX will automatically recreate sessions for those users when necessary.
• Is rest source at application level depend on workspace remote server?
  Yes, but as part of your application export/import we will automatically take care of creating the remote server if it’s not available yet.
• Can we download the example applications that Carsten is demoing?
  The Sample Applications that get published as soon as APEX 23.1 goes GA will contain examples using the background processes.
• When you export application does it export plugin and can it be deployed using CI/CD from one env to another?
  Yes, the application export contains all plug-ins which have been created/imported into the application.
• Multicloud question - Conceptually it should be possible to use CRUD REST API on AWS dynamodb and build forms and reports in Oracle Apex using those REST API?
  Sure. That’s all fine for single use-cases in an application. But it’s definitely not the sweet spot of APEX if all the data is stored somewhere else. The power of APEX comes with the fast manipulation of local data using SQL or PL/SQL.