APEX application development with an existing data model

Question

Dear all,
We - as a company - are trying to build an application in ApEx with an existing data model. The idea is that the data model that has all sorts of TAPIs and business rules defined is going to be re-used in an ApEx environment. I am actually wondering whether this is possible, wise, feasible. When I am building some simple pages on one specific table, which has approx. 35 fields, sometimes the triggers around that table fail. Before I am actually going to dive in to try and sort these problems I am wondering whether this use of a data model in an ApEx environment is wise.
I mean, when you build an ApEx application there are usually no triggers and TAPIs available. My logic is that the ApEx application can look after validation and stuff.
Does anybody experienced have anything smart and useful to say about this. Any feedback is appreciated.
Kind regards,
-victorbax
-leiderdorp, the netherlands

Answer 1

Hey vik,
At my company we rarely use the standard APEX wizards because of multi-linguility (on data level) and error management issues.
We always create an API in PL/SQL and call the procedures for APEX making APEX the 'view' layer in a kind of model-view-controller architecture.
The main thing to keep in mind is maintainability, if you're working with an existing datamodel with an API that works it's probably best to just created forms and reports through APEX and then calling the appropriate pl/sql (packaged) procedure manually. We believe that this kind of architecture has the downside of being a little more work initially but it's much easier to maintain large projects through a self written API and take care of issues like error handling, logging and multi-linguility through a self written API.
Kind Regards,
Geert Guldentops