Oracle Database Tips by Donald Burleson

Using APEX to Create a Form on a Table with Report

A popular wizard to use when building applications is the Form on a Table with Report.  This wizard will build two application pages complete with navigation to go back and forth between the two pages.  The first page is a report and the second page is a form for editing a row in the report.

At this point, readers might be thinking the author is a masochist.  They might be asking themselves, "Why did he take us the long route of making the report and the form when we could have just done it this way?"  It is because the wizards will not do everything, and it is vital to know how to add page components to reports and forms with APEX. 

The following exercise walks through the creation of the Form on a Table with Report for the CONFERENCE_RSVP table.

1.       To create a Form on a Table with Report, navigate to the application home page for the Easy HTML-DB Book application and click on Create Page.

2.       Choose the Form option and click Next.

3.       Choose the Form on a Table with Report option and click Next.

4.       On the Table / View Owner page the EASYHDB schema will be selected.  Click Next.

5.       On the next page enter CONFERENCE_RSVP for the table name and click Next.

6.       On the Define Report page:

·        Page: 1082.

·        Page Name: Report - Conference Attendees.

·        Region Title: Conference Attendees.

·        Leave the rest defaulted and click Next.

7.       No tabs and click Next.

8.       On the next page leave all columns selected and click Next.

9.       On the next page click the edit icon of your choice and click Next.

10.    On the Define Form Page screen:

·        Page 1083.

·        Page Name: Edit - Conference Attendee.

·        Region Title - Conference Attendee.

·        Click Next.

11.    No tabs and click Next.

12.    On the next page leave the default primary key (ID) and click Next.

13.    On the next page choose the Existing trigger option and click Next.

14.    On the next page leave all column selected and click Next.

15.    On the Identify Process Options page leave the defaults and click Next.

16.    Finally, click Finish and Run the page.

The use of this wizard results in the creation of pages very quickly in APEX.  In fact, while writing this part of the chapter, I ran through this exercise several times.  Although I did not enter the page names and titles each time, I was able to create the two pages in less than 40 seconds.  Setting up User Interface Default for the CONFERENCE_RSVP would produce two pages that needed very little customization.  The only customization I can think of would be modifying the form layout.

The above book excerpt is from:

Easy HTML-DB Oracle Application Express

Create Dynamic Web Pages with OAE

ISBN 0-9761573-1-4   

Michael Cunningham & Kent Crotty

http://www.rampant-books.com/book_2005_2_html_db.htm