APEX

This is the start point where development begins. I want to hear experiences from other people who find them in similar situation. Let's start..

I work in bank, in software department of IT sector. Few months ago, we bring in APEX as a development tool and learned it pretty much. Made 2-3 lightweight applications and decided to continue with APEX development for our (bank) purposes. Main question is: Will it be better to create all bank applications in one APEX application (for example Database application) or every time create a new APEX application? Both sides has good and bad things. One APEX application containing few other applications is good, because you will make one kind of menus, forms, reports, helps, plug-ins etc.. The bad thing is that you'll have a less control of individual applications in that group. On the other hand, we can get better control of every single bank's application in individually new APEX applications, but in that case, we need to install all plug-ins for every application, create "default" parts of forms, reports, menus etc..

Personally, I would prefer 2nd solution, because of better control for every application. I don't know if there is a way that we can install plug-ins at the WORKSPACE level, or just at the APEX application level? Maybe we could find the way to copy forms and reports from one APEX application to another, or make some kind of starting form (or prototype form, default form..) where we could insert all things we want, and then use it when creating new forms in future. In this situation, we can ask new question, how to apply change to all other forms, if we need it? Some solution that all forms refer to that starting form and with the change of it, all referencing form will be changed in the same way?

I hope the problem is clear for everyone who read this.

Thanks,
Miroslav