Oracle APEX Version control

I hear from many classic developers that APEX has a weakness of version control. Well, it depends how you see a version control. In side APEX installation, there a packaged application to zip your application and store it in the database as part of version controls.

I prefer to have this outside of APEX and to have the database backed up as well as the application and versioned (in this case by time stamp).

I use linux, if you would like to have the same for window, let me know, I can create a bat file for you 🙂

I have created a directory for APEX application and one for DB, this works with APEX 5.x.

Create a file and call it appBackup.sh and put the below code to it. This exports the application just like you to inside APEX development environment.

#!/bin/sh

# Apex Install directory
APEX_HOME=/home/oracle/apex # Required Info
export APEX_HOME

BACKUP_DEST=/media/apexapp/ApexBackup/apex # APEX back up destination 
export BACKUP_DEST

ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0.2/db_1 # Oracle home
export ORACLE_HOME

# Export runs from here
cd $APEX_HOME/utilities

echo Running Export.......

JAVA_HOME=/home/oracle/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/dbhome_1/jdk/jre/bin
export JAVA_HOME

java oracle.apex.APEXExport -db localhost:1521/orcl -user <apexuser> -password <apexpwd> -applicationid 139

DATE=$(date +"%Y%m%d%H%M")

# Add timestamp to the application and move it the APEX folder
mv f139.sql $BACKUP_DEST/f139_$DATE.sql

echo removed

exp apexuser/apexpwd file=apexdmp.dmp

DATE=$(date +"%Y%m%d%H%M")

mv apexdmp.dmp db/apexdmp_$DATE.dmp

sh appBackup.sh
sh dbBackup.sh

Notes: To keep the track on changes in the application, you should use the Comment property of the items/page.

Finally the APEX export a SQL file, it means you can use any software to compare the changes between versions.