APEX 4.0 EA version is now out. Everyone who has been waiting to get their hands on the new release can sign up at: http://tryapexnow.com/. Click on the Sign Up button.

tryapexnow.com Early Adopter Sign Up Page

I first launched the application in IE8 (browser) but realized that some of the buttons were not showing up. Oracle also posts a warning, “Internet Explorer is not currently supported with the hosted APEX 4.0 Early Adopter. The preferred browser for this evaluation is Mozilla Firefox. Internet Explorer will be fully supported at a later date (before Production).”

Application Express 4.0 EA Home Page

I first wanted to try the new application type – “websheet”. But as I clicked on the option, I got an error: “Websheets are not enabled at this time”. Looking at some of the messages, it looks like Oracle will have an EA Phase II.

The interface does look good. I will be reviewing the new features and posting my feedback/thoughts here in future posts.

Last week I had installed Oracle XE on our Linux DEV box. I wanted to make some changes to the instance settings and realized I had misplaced the password for Internal workspace account. After doing some research, I found that Oracle provides us a “password change” script with APEX source code. We can run this script using the SYS account and it will reset the password for internal account. Here are the steps and an example:

1) Log into sqlplus using the SYS account.

2) Execute apxxepwd.sql script in the APEX source code directory with the new password.

3) Log back into Application Express INTERNAL workspace using the new password.

Here is an example:

[home@localhost]# cd apex
[home@localhost apex]# sqlplus sys/syspassword
SQL> @apxxepwd.sql password123
Session altered.
...changing password for ADMIN
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
Commit complete.
SQL> exit

The code in apxxepwd.sql looks like this:

Rem Copyright (c) Oracle Corporation 1999 - 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Rem
Rem NAME
Rem apxxepwd.sql
Rem
Rem DESCRIPTION
Rem Changes the password for the INTERNAL ADMIN user
Rem
Rem NOTES
Rem Assumes the SYS user is connected.
Rem
Rem REQUIRENTS
Rem - Oracle 10g
Rem
Rem
Rem MODIFIED (MM/DD/YYYY)
Rem jstraub 08/01/2006 - Created
Rem jkallman 09/29/2006 - Adjusted current_schema to FLOWS_030000
Rem jkallman 08/02/2007 - Change FLOWS_030000 references to FLOWS_030100
Rem
set define '&'
set verify off
alter session set current_schema = FLOWS_030100;
prompt ...changing password for ADMIN
begin
wwv_flow_security.g_security_group_id := 10;
wwv_flow_security.g_user := 'ADMIN';
wwv_flow_security.g_import_in_progress := true;
for c1 in (select user_id
from wwv_flow_fnd_user
where security_group_id = wwv_flow_security.g_security_group_id
and user_name = wwv_flow_security.g_user) loop
wwv_flow_fnd_user_api.edit_fnd_user(
p_user_id => c1.user_id,
p_user_name => wwv_flow_security.g_user,
p_web_password => '&1',
p_new_password => '&1');
end loop;
wwv_flow_security.g_import_in_progress := false;
end;
/
commit;