Tuesday, May 08, 2007

End-user configurable help in Apex

Let's assume the following scenario:

We have an application developed by A for B, B wants to be able to add and edit help information on the pages of the application, but has no access to the development environment of Apex.

1. Create a table HELP with 3 columns:

CREATE table "HELP" (
"ID" NUMBER,
"PAGE" NUMBER,
"HELP" VARCHAR2(4000),
constraint "HELP_PK" primary key ("ID")
)
/

CREATE sequence "HELP_SEQ"
/

CREATE trigger "BI_HELP"
before insert on "HELP"
for each row
begin
select "HELP_SEQ".nextval into :NEW.ID from dual;
end;
/
2. Create a "report and form" on this table in your application, they will be used for maintaining the help table.

3. Create a help region on Page 0 as report region, use the following SQL:

select help from HELP where page = &APP_PAGE_ID. and help is not NULL


Condition for this region: select help from HELP where page = &APP_PAGE_ID. and help is not NULL returns at least one row.


4. Using the report and form from step 2 an authorized user can create and edit the help text for the pages: the page number goes into PAGE, the text into HELP.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Update

Today I have updated my Ubuntu 6.10 server to 7.04 without any problems.

Additionally I installed XE on the machine - worked perfectly.

As a precaution I always use the "real" root in Ubuntu for installing XE, as I ran into some troubles with doing it with "sudo" some months ago.