Monday 5 January 2009

Installing Oracle Apex on Oracle 10g R2 with EPG is not supported

Apex with Oracle EPG (Embedded PL/SQL Gateway) is not supported for any version below version Oracle 11g. See here, http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E10513_01/doc/install.310/e10496/otn_install.htm#BABFICIA





The Note in section "3.3.5 Configure the Embedded PL/SQL Gateway" says it all.

If you are going to use Oracle Apex on 10g, you will have to use an HTTP Server, like Apache or Oracle's version of Apache.

Do not try to configure EPG in an earlier release than Oracle 11g, you will be frustrated as this is not supported. Oracle Apex with a seperate HTTP server, that is NO EPG, is possible and supported from Oracle 9.2.0.3 or later releases.

Oracle Apex is a rapid application development environment using Oracle XMLDB. Oracle Apex comes free and you get it in Oracle 11g by default. Apex is, I think, Oracle's answer to hosted development and Cloud Computing.

I don't know for what reason one would do install Apex with EPG in Oracle 10g. The purpose of this post was to tell you that this is NOT possible.

My Oracle 10g R2 dev installation didn't have extra database applications and it was not ready for any kind Apex configuration not even for the supported configuration which uses an HTTP server.

I had to manually configure the Oracle 10gR2 installation on my dev box to be able to use Apex. I had to install Oracle Text, JVM and the Oracle XML database and do other pre-installation tasks such as change SGA component sizes, see below for details of what you have to do.

Oracle Apex and Oracle 10g database requirements

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E10513_01/doc/install.310/e10496/pre_require.htm#BABFCFBC


Steps for manually installing the extra database components needed for Apex to an existing database installation are below.


1. install Oracle Text

You will have to create the DRSYS tablespace first and then run the following script as SYSDBA

SQL> @$ORACLE_HOME/ctx/admin/catctx.sql ctxsys DRSYS TEMP NOLOCK


2. Install Oracle JVM (for releases before 10g R1 (10.1) )

SQL>@$ORACLE_HOME/javavm/install/initjvm.sql


3. Install Oracle XML Database

As XMLDB is not installed, (this is not a DB for XML LOBs) you will have to manually install it after creating the XDB tablespace.

SQL>@$ORACLE_HOME/ctx/admin/catqm.sql change_on_install XDB TEMP

and then

SQL>@$ORACLE_HOME/ctx/admin/catxdbj.sql

4. Install Apex

SQL>@apexins password APEX_TS APEX_TS TEMP /i/

If you succeed you will get:


Thank you for installing Oracle Application Express.

Oracle Application Express is installed in the FLOWS_030000 schema.

The structure of the link to the Application Express administration services is as follows:
http://host:port/pls/apex/apex_admin

The structure of the link to the Application Express development interface is as follows:
http://host:port/pls/apex



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Kubilay,

Just came across your post today and it I was absolutely taken aback by your statements (the purpose of your post) since I've got APEX 3.1 running on 10.2.0.4.0 through EPG. It doesn't seem that you've actually tried it since I had it up and running in just under 45 minutes by simply following the instructions for 11G and changing a single setting in XDB (allow-repository-anonymous-access).

You say that there's no reason for installing APEX on 10G with EPG. What about these:
- mod_plsql runs on OHS which merely is an outdated version of Apache 1.3 possibly causing serious security issues
- no need to run and configure a separate Web Server

Sure, it's not supported but when it comes to my personal development environment I never cared much about certification...

One more thought: OracleXE delivers APEX through XDB/EPG. Did it never occur to you that this means that it must possible somehow?

Cheers
Chris

Kubilay said...

Hi Chris

Thank you for your comment. Yeah reading back my post I found it to be a bit too negative myself.

You are correct, I got EPG to work on Oracle 10g R2 with the change on the XDB authentication setting as well, at the time. But, the thing which put me off most was that I was wanting to use Apex with EPG on some of our production systems at the time which were Oracle 10g R2. And realising "is not supported!" just upset me, and decided to blog about it that way. A bit unfair and silly of me, I admit, especially when Apex is such a good system.

I too use it the way you say on my development boxes as well.

I agree with your reasons on using EGP on 10g too. I really want everything in the database. I don't want to rely on other servers. I really like the all-in-one-box approach of Apex.

Definitely installing Oracle Apex on Oracle 10g with EPG (for development) is brilliant. I agree with you 100%.

Not being able to productionise it on Oracle 10g R2 with the support license covering it is what bugged me then.

Thank you again for your comment.

Cheers

Kubilay

Craig Glendenning said...

Thanks for the instructions! I used this post in concert with some from otn, and other sources to formulate a step-by-step for installing Application Express (APEX) on 10g with the PL/SQL gateway (EPG) using the http server from the XML DB based on my own experiences, which were less than pleasant. I have now run through this on 3 systems, and it seems to be pretty solid. Please comment on the post if you have issues! (well, I'm not a shrink, so just issues with the installation...)

http://cglendenningoracle.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-install-oracle-application.html

P.S. - Although APEX with the PL/SQL gateway on 10g does work, I don't think it is officially a supported configuration by Oracle.

Awais Aslam said...

hi chris i like ur support for all the installation done for apex 4 on 10g . I m new to this application and having problem in configuring apex 4 on 10g databse 10.2.3 . can you please send me detail step by step installation ? i would be very thank full to u . aaiixraa@gmail.com