I work in a quite large enterprise environment and have asked for a database with APEX for testing purposes.
The database group, which is installing and maintaining Oracle databases in our database, don't want APEX scattered around in multiple databases in the enterprise. This is due the fear of having to maintain and patch multiple APEX installations with the sparse resources the database group has.
So, their suggested solution is to have one common APEX installation were we get our own workspace. Our user data should be located in separate databases away from the apex database. By doing it that way, the database group need only to patch and maintain one APEX installation.
My questions are:
Is this a feasible way to set up an APEX workspace?
How can we access our own databases from our APEX installations? Will we have to use private synonyms over database link? If so, will there be any problems with such an architecture?
I am planning to use Kerberos for authentication of users to my APEX applications.
Please let me know if you need more information from me. We are running Oracle 12c on Linux and are planning to use the latest Apex-version (i.e. Apex 5 something).
A schetched layout looks like this:
APEX DB -- Workspace1 in Apex DB --> OracleSid1
|-- Workspace2 in Apex DB --> OracleSid2
|-- Workspace3 in Apex DB --> OracleSid3
where the workspaces are in the APEX DB, while the OracleSids are separate databases.