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 databaseĀ 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 š
I have created a directory for APEX application and one for DB, this works with APEX 5.x.
Create a file and call itĀ 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 destinationĀ 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
now create a shell file to run both together with versionAPEX.sh and put the below code to it.
sh appBackup.sh sh dbBackup.sh
The apexuser is theĀ APPLICATION PARSING SCHEMA user.
Now every time you run versionAPEX.sh, you application is exported and backed up with data. you can revert anything anytime from your versioned app.
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.Ā