APEX vs PHP

Hello everyone,
I'm about to start an online catalog for schools where teachers upload grades and parents can login-in and see them.It's not very complicated, just a form and a few reports(looking for a nice user-friendly interface).
My friend (and co-worker on this) it's PhP fan, and he knows nothing about Apex(as i don't know much about PhP), so after we lined up all the ideas and ended up chosing a platform.This is our problem!
I love APEX (and i'm pretty good at it) and this would be my favorite. The problem is that he keeps saying that Apex is poor and that lots of top Alexa's sites are Php(Facebook,Wikipedia,etc).
It would be nice if you APEX guru's could give my some arguments to suggest that APEX pawns PhP + MySql.I'm sure that i can make this project in APEX but I really can't find any convincing arguments in front of PhP.
I don't think that pricing is a problem since we won't expect more then 200 visitors at once and 10g XE could make it i hope :).
Kind Regards,
Bogdan Ursea

I've been using APEX for 10 years and I've worked in PHP as well. I've never worked with any PHP frameworks, so it was just pure PHP and MySQL. At the end of the day, PHP is just scripting, like Perl, .Net, Ruby. It's a bunch of code. APEX uses declarative objects like regions, reports, items, validations. You'd have to hand code soooooooo much in PHP that's already built into APEX like every aspect of Interactive Reports, or validations. I'd say you could build an app in APEX that would take you 10 times as long to build in PHP. Have you ever built an app using nothing but the PL/SQL web toolkit (htp.p...)? If so, that's about what it's like in PHP.
What are PHP's strengths? Well it works with any database, one app can go against multiple databases, there are more php / MySQL hosting companies than APEX hosting companies. To be fair, it's a pretty easy language to learn and the code is pretty readable. But again, it's just a bunch of code.
You're not building facebook or wikipedia. For that matter, neither are 99% of the developers in the world. Don't look to their architecture for inspiration. They have to make tradeoffs to support the insane number of concurrent users and data. They do things like using NoSQL databases (MongoDB, etc) that are massively distributed clusters. Even though PHP is plenty scalable for 99% of the web apps out there, facebook needed more speed so they wrote a compiler for it. Their challenges are much different than yours. Your primary challenge is going to be ease of use productivity, which is where APEX shines.
I hope you've considered the security implications of the app you're building. Are you planning on encrypting the data? What type of authentication are you going to do? Make sure you are using session state protection so I can't just change the primary key in the URL and see someone elses grades.
Tyler Muth
http://tylermuth.wordpress.com
"Applied Oracle Security: Developing Secure Database and Middleware Environments": http://sn.im/aos.book

Similar Messages

APEX or PHP?

How I choose Apex or PHP for Oracle?
What is difference a diapason, programming skillful, product building period time and customizing of these?

Hello,
To seriously answer that question (obviously bearing in mind you're in an APEX forum, so the vast majority of people in here are going to be pro-APEX, myself included), we need to know a lot more about your exact requirements.
For example -
1) Is this a one-off development?
2) Do you already have skills in one (or both) of the tools?
3) What sort of application(s) are you trying to build?
The more information you can give the better really.
John.
http://jes.blogs.shellprompt.net
http://www.apex-evangelists.com

Mix Apex and PHP

Hello,
Do you think thsi approach will work:
1. Linux server running web server with php and oracle CLIENT on it.
This machine will provide interface (shiny one) for end users(customers)
The machine will connect to another machine running Oracle with APEX on it.
2. Pro users(salesmen, etc) will use the apex interface to look at the same customer data.
Basically I want to know if:
1. PHP via oci8 driver can easily modify data within APEX schema.
2. This approach makes sense.
Thanks,
Peter
Edited by: user12251833 on Jul 30, 2010 2:59 PM

Hi Peter,
yes, it is possible to do that. With PHP you can access the same database and same tables as APEX will use in its parsing schema.
If this approach makes sense? I don't know, i probably would use APEX for both UI's, since you can build good looking and end-user-proof Layouts with APEX.
brgds,
Peter
Blog: http://www.oracle-and-apex.com
ApexLib: http://apexlib.oracleapex.info
Work: http://www.click-click.at
Training: http://www.click-click.at/apex-4-0-workshops

APEX vs PHP hosting cost

Am new to APEX so please pardon the ignorance. Am trying to decide on a platform for a small application i have to build for a potential client.
As a long time Oracle developer, I was able to pickup APEX very quickly and was excited at the prospect of not having to learn a new language like PHP.
However, hosting services for APEX applications seem to be extremely costly compared to PHP/MySQL.
How are organizations able to justify the cost ? Or am I missing something ?
Thanks

I have some sympathy here. I help run a dog training school. We are all volunteers, we make no money and we all have day jobs.
I want to put some of the training schedules, notes and class lists on the web so that the instructors don't have to keep their own manual notes. I'm paying £6 per year to host my mySQL database and PHP.
However my heart is broken with the thing. I have a day job, and I can't spend the time on it. Yes there are tools out there that can help generate the code, but nothing compares to what APEX can do. I just can't be bothered coding all the HTML and PHP. Then I've got to make sure it's secure, ugh!
However for a 12 person system I can't go and ask them all to help pay for APEX hosting.
If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. Maybe if someone from Oracle is listening they could alter the terms of using apex.oracle.com so I could host the app there, I don't mind backing it up myself, it will only change a couple of times a week. Make it that no person identifiable data is loaded and that it can't be used for commerical purposes. Think of the take up it could bring to APEX.

Pasar valores a otra Pagina (de Apex a PHP)

Buen día
Tengo una página básica en ápex que captura el valor de dos campos y los debe de pasar a una página PHP pero no encuentro la forma de que estos valores me pasen a la pagina PHP si alguien tiene esto resuelto
Gracias por la Ayuda

Lo termine solucionando el problema era que uno de los includes entraba en conflicto con la pagina de plantilla porque estaba mal editado

PHP and Apex

I like PHP and I like Apex. Is there any chance to see an interaction between the two? I know that it
is possible to link PHP with the Apache server which runs Apex but I am asking for the field addressing
and exchanging the variables between PHP code and PL/SQL code. That would really turn Apex into a
killer app.
Mladen Gogala

Chris, I was thinking about addressing the Apex form fields through PHP. The application in question has to upload some files to Oracle database. The problem is that I need to fetch it first from another machine. That can be easily done with PHP and I would like to be able to address the form fields in Apex from PHP. As for another book, yes, I would like to write one. I've already been putting some ideas on the paper but it is still at the very beginning.

Windows, Oracle XE & PHP

I have the following code failing to connect to my database even though I can access that database using sqldeveloper as well as apex(http://localhost:8080/apex/)
<?php
    $SGMDBUsername            = "big";
    $SGMDBPassword            = "big";
    $SGMDBName                = "s7s";
// ORACLE_HOME=C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server
//    $conn=oci_connect($SGMDBUsername, $SGMDBPassword, $SGMDBName);
    // The above gives ORA-12514: TNS:listener does not currently know of service requested in connect descriptor
//    $conn=oci_connect($SGMDBUsername, $SGMDBPassword);
    // The above gives ORA-12560: TNS:protocol adapter error
//    $conn = oci_connect($SGMDBUsername, $SGMDBPassword, 'localhost/'.$SGMDBName);
    // The above gives ORA-12514: TNS:listener does not currently know of service requested in connect descriptor
    $conn = oci_connect($SGMDBUsername, $SGMDBPassword, '127.0.0.1/'.$SGMDBName);
    // The above gives ORA-12514: TNS:listener does not currently know of service requested in connect descriptor
    if ( ! $conn )
        $e = oci_error(); // For oci_connect errors pass no handle
//        echo 'Unable to OCILogon to database. '.$e['message'];
        echo $e['message'];
        die();
    echo "Connected!";
?>As you can see I have attempted various ways to connect and have listed the error messages I get from each within the code.
Please tell me how to fix this.

Okay, now what's the value of the SERVICE_NAMES parameter in the database?
Some more information:
//    $conn=oci_connect($SGMDBUsername, $SGMDBPassword, $SGMDBName);
    // The above gives ORA-12514: TNS:listener does not currently know of service requested in connect descriptorYou'll get this error if the SERVICE_NAME in your TNSNAMES.ORA file doesn't match that of the database parameter.
//    $conn=oci_connect($SGMDBUsername, $SGMDBPassword);
    // The above gives ORA-12560: TNS:protocol adapter errorThis uses Oracle's bequeath protocol and only works if the client and server exist on the same machine. If it does, then you are missing additional information like an ORACLE_SID environment variable.
//    $conn = oci_connect($SGMDBUsername, $SGMDBPassword, 'localhost/'.$SGMDBName);
    // The above gives ORA-12514: TNS:listener does not currently know of service requested in connect descriptor
    $conn = oci_connect($SGMDBUsername, $SGMDBPassword, '127.0.0.1/'.$SGMDBName);
    // The above gives ORA-12514: TNS:listener does not currently know of service requested in connect descriptorFor these two you need to enable EZCONNECT by setting the correct value in your SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES parameter in your SQLNET.ORA file. Also your string you passed is not correct either. It should be:
//host:port/service_nameor
host:port/service_name

How to setting sessions on XE

Hi, i need I need to know how to configure my server Oracle XE to be able to connect from 3 to 10 concurrent users. (value of SESSIONS and PROCESS)
My application is a document management and for 8 hours a day Monday through Friday, users will access the database in order to generate Word documents.
Additionally, the limit of 1GB of RAM, which is the number of users who can connect to Oracle XE?
Roberto.

user584812 wrote:
Thank you, very good. But, Oracle Database XE support up 300 conected users?
Roberto.Hi Roberto,
what do you mean by 300 connected users? Will all them have a persistent connection via JDBC, OCI or .Net? Or will they be served as a web application via APEX, perl, php or J2EE?
In the web scenario it should only result in a few concurrent sessions anyway. In the client/server scenario you could also configure XE to use MTS (multi threaded server, now called Shared Server).
This will cut down your number of processes on the server side. If not many users are active at the same time this could be a viable option:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2713811/Oracle-Configuration-And-Tuning-MultiThreaded-Server-Architecture
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:7811879860826
http://www.dba-oracle.com/t_mts_multithreaded_servers_shared.htm
Aside from that the Oracle development team did load and performance testing for XE with 50 concurrent active users which went fine.
Regards,
~Dietmar.

It works in Apex but not in PHP?

When I run the following from my php application/script I find that I get no data back but when I run just the SQL statement in Database Express' SQL Command console (Apex) I get good data back.
$StartDate="2006/01/01 06:00:00";
$EndDate="2007/09/29 6:00:00";
$SQL = "SELECT TRANS_TABLE_NAME, SUM(TRANS_TURNOVER) TotalTurnover FROM TRANSACT
where (TRANS_CODE = '$number' AND
(TRANS_DATE BETWEEN TO_DATE('$StartDate','YYYY/MM/DD HH24:MI:SS') AND TO_DATE('$EndDate','YYYY/MM/DD HH24:MI:SS')))
GROUP BY TRANS_TABLE_NAME;";
$stmt = OCIParse($conn, $SQL );
OCIExecute($stmt);
// echo $SQL;
$Count = 0;
while (OCIFetch($stmt))
echo "COL1=" . ociresult($stmt, "COL1") .
", COL2=" . ociresult($stmt, "COL2") . "\n";
$Count++;
if ($Count == 0)
print "\nError code = " . ora_errorcode();
print "\nError message = " . ora_error();
$Message = sprintf("No play by [%s] found! ", $number);
trigger_error($Message, E_USER_ERROR);
die();
Please tell me what I have got wrong.

Check http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/php/htdocs/php_troubleshooting_faq.html#testret in case there are problems executing.
You are mixing old ora_* functions with oci* functions - this won't work.
Perhaps check some examples, either in the PHP manual or one of the PHP/Oracle books or even Underground PHP and Oracle Manual.
-- cj

Calling Apex Application using a php script

Hi guys,how can i directly call my Apex Application using a php script.i have apex 2.1 intalled on my system.i created an application and i want my application users to connect directly to the applications login page.I mean somthing like this
(http://127.0.0.1:8080/apex/f?p=103)
and i want users to connect using somthing like this
(http://my system/index.php) or localhost/index.php?
i can run a script query and access my data stored on the database,but what i really want is to connect directly to the login page of my application,so that the staffs in HR can connect direstly to there HR application while those in Sales Will connect direcly to there applications page so it will look like this
http://my system/hr.php
http://mysystem/sales.php

Originally, I had problems w/ the file being placed in
C:/whatever.ext b/c I wasn't using relative paths.
This is the code I use:
$MAXIMUM_FILESIZE = 1024 * 1024 * 2; // 2MB
$newFileLoc = "./wherever/file.jpg"
if ($_FILES['Filedata']['size'] <= $MAXIMUM_FILESIZE) {
move_uploaded_file($_FILES['Filedata']['tmp_name'],
"./temporary/".$_FILES['Filedata']['name']);
rename( "./temporary/".$_FILES['Filedata']['name'],
$newFileLoc );
chmod( $newFileLoc, 0777 );
Modified from this article by Adobe:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/201/html/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=Live Docs_Book_Parts&file=17_Networking_and_communications_173_6.html

Question regarding php files in apex bundle apex_4.0.2.zip

hi
please suggest why we have php files in apex ? I belive the spell checker textarea feature is removed from 4.0.2 but still there are some php files found in apex bundle and cause of this we have one vulnarability issue “Upgrade to PHP version 5.3.12 / 5.4.2 or later. A 'mod_rewrite' workaround is available as well.”
Please suggest if we can remove these files or they are really necessary and should stay in images folder ?
folder: \images\fck\editor\dialog\fck_spellerpages\spellerpages\server-scripts
spellchecker.php
spellchecker.cfm
spellchecker.pl

Hi Sachin,
you can remove the "server-scripts" folder. In newer versions of APEX this folder is not included anymore.
Regards
Patrick
My Blog: http://www.inside-oracle-apex.com
APEX Plug-Ins: http://apex.oracle.com/plugins
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/patrickwolf

Does apex support any server side JSP or PHP?

I have the folowing script that is used to save flash files as images. I am hoping there is some way to make these serverside calls from within apex.
<%@ page import="java.io.OutputStream"%>
<%@ page import="java.awt.Color"%>
<%@ page import="java.awt.Graphics"%>
<%@ page import="java.awt.image.BufferedImage"%>
<%@ page import="javax.imageio.ImageIO"%>
<%
     //Decoded data from charts.
     String data="";
     //Rows of color values.
     String[] rows;
     //Width and height of chart.
     int width=0;
     int height=0;
     //Default background color of the chart
     String bgcolor="";
     Color bgColor;
     //Get the width and height from form
     try{
          width = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("width"));
          height = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("height"));
     catch(Exception e){
          //If the width and height have not been given, we cannot create the image.
          out.print("Image width/height not provided.");
          out.close();
     if(width==0 || height==0){
          //If the width and height are less than 1, we cannot create the image.
          out.print("Image width/height not provided.");
          out.close();
     //Get background color from request and set default
     bgcolor =request.getParameter("bgcolor");
     if (bgcolor==null || bgcolor=="" || bgcolor==null){
               bgcolor = "FFFFFF";
     //Convert background color to color object
     bgColor = new Color(Integer.parseInt(bgcolor,16));
     //Get image data from request
     data = request.getParameter("data");
     if(data==null){
          //If image data not provided.
          out.print("Image Data not supplied.");
          out.close();
     try{
          //Parse data
          rows = new String[height+1];
          rows = data.split(";");
          //Bitmap to store the chart.
          //Reference to graphics object - gr
          BufferedImage chart = new BufferedImage(width,height,BufferedImage.TYPE_3BYTE_BGR);
          Graphics gr = chart.createGraphics();
          gr.setColor(bgColor);
          gr.fillRect(0,0,width,height);
          String c;
          int r;
          int ri = 0;
          for (int i=0; i<rows.length; i++){
               //Split individual pixels.
               String[] pixels = rows.split(",");
               //Set horizontal row index to 0
               ri = 0;
               for (int j=0; j<pixels.length; j++){
                    //Now, if it's not empty, we process it
                    //Split the color and repeat factor
                    String[] clrs = pixels[j].split("_");
                    //Reference to color
                    c = clrs[0];
                    r = Integer.parseInt(clrs[1]);
                    //If color is not empty (i.e. not background pixel)
                    if (c!=null && c.length()>0 && c!=""){
                         if (c.length()<6){
                              //If the hexadecimal code is less than 6 characters, pad with 0
                              StringBuffer str = new StringBuffer(c);
                              int strLength = str.length();
                              for ( int p = c.length()+1; p <= 6 ; p ++ ) {
                                        str.insert( 0, "0" );
                              //Assing the new padded string
                              c = str.toString();
                         for (int k=1; k<=r; k++){
                              //Draw each pixel
                              gr.setColor(new Color(Integer.parseInt(c,16)));
                              gr.fillRect(ri, i,1,1);
                              //Increment horizontal row count
                              ri++;
                    }else{
                         //Just increment horizontal index
                         ri = ri + r;
          //Returns the image
          response.setContentType("image/jpeg");
          response.addHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=\"FusionCharts.jpg\"");
          OutputStream os = response.getOutputStream();
          ImageIO.write(chart, "jpeg", os);
          os.close();
     }catch(Exception e){
          //IF the image data is mal-formatted.
          out.print("Image data is not in proper format.");
          out.close();
%>

NO, APEX does NOT support running jsp or PHP scripts..
Thank you,
Tony Miller
Webster, TX

Php Apex

Hello guys,
i'm brazilian and please, sorry for the bad english, but i will know if is possible the integration with php and apex.
Thanks.
Regards,
Raul Welter

Yes. Create a link in Apex to a php page (or the other way around). Like clicking on:
http://php.net/manual/en/index.php
I just created a link here from this page in the Apex forum to a php page. If needed just add parameters to the url.

Using APEX as SSO redirect for existing web application

Hi,
I have an existing PHP based Web Application hosted on an Apache server. I want to protect these web pages by authenticating users via Oracle SSO.
I tested this by creating a simple APEX web page with redirect <Meta> tag to route traffic to my application upon successful SSO login. This works fine if request comes directly to APEX page....
So my question is how do I protect php pages from being directly accessed and still be able to get sso user login information (like username) coming from APEX page?
Do I still need to set up mod_sso.so in osso.conf for my Apache Server or should I just register my php web application as partner application with SSO server without going through APEX?
Any advice on this is greatly appreciate.
Thanks,
james

Tony,
Sorry for taking so long to respond as I got side tracked with other tasks.
Thank you so much for the link. The provided link is very helpful.
One difference in my situation is that I am using a generic Apache installation (version 2.2.11) and not Oracle Apache Server from OAS.
So I copied mod_osso.so from OAS 10.1.3.1.0 installation to my generic Apache location. As I tried to startup Apache instance I got following error while loading mod_osso.so.
... Cannot load /apache-2.2.11/modules/mod_osso.so into server: /apache-2.2.11/modules/mod_osso.so: undefined symbol: ap_configtestonly
I did some search and found that other folks are reporting success of using mod_osso.so on generic Apache (without saying which version of Apache). I wonder if mod_osso.so can only work with older version of Apache?
Do you have insights on this by any chance?
Thanks again,
James

A question about error with jasperserver for pdf and Apex

I have created a pdf report on jasperserver and I can call it from apex via a url and it displays fine. The url is this format {http://server:port/jasperserver/flow.html?_flowId=viewReportFlow&reportUnit=/reports/Apex/deptemp&output=pdf&deptNo=#DEPTNO#&j_username=un&j_password=pw}
However, I am trying to follow a stored procedure executed from Apex so it would not expose the username/pwd in the url like above.
If I am reading the apache error log correctly it is erroring in this piece of the code below where it executes {Dbms_Lob.writeAppend}
loop
begin
-- read the next chunk of binary data
Utl_Http.read_raw(vResponse, vData);
-- append it to our blob for the pdf file
Dbms_Lob.writeAppend
( lob_loc => vBlobRef
, amount => Utl_Raw.length(vData)
, buffer => vData
exception when utl_http.end_of_body then
exit; -- exit loop
end;
end loop;
Utl_Http.end_response(vResponse);}
The error log says this; HTTP-500 ORA-14453: attempt to use a LOB of a temporary table, whose data has alreadybeen purged\n
What is this error telling me and how can I correct it?
The stored procedure I am following is below but replaced the vReportURL with my url like above that works.
Thank you,
Mark
{CREATE OR REPLACE procedure runJasperReport(i_deptno   in varchar2)
is
vReportURL       varchar2(255);
vBlobRef         blob;
vRequest         Utl_Http.req;
vResponse        Utl_Http.resp;
vData            raw(32767);
begin
-- build URL to call the report
vReportURL := 'http://host:port/jasperserver/flow.html?_flowId=viewReportFlow'||
     '&reportUnit=/reports/Apex/deptemp'||
     '&output=pdf'||
     '&j_username=un&j_password=pw'||
     '&deptNo='||i_deptno;
-- get the blob reference
insert into demo_pdf (pdf_report)
values( empty_blob() )
returning pdf_report into vBlobRef;
-- Get the pdf file from JasperServer by simulating a report call from the browser
vRequest := Utl_Http.begin_request(vReportUrl);
Utl_Http.set_header(vRequest, 'User-Agent', 'Mozilla/4.0');
vResponse := Utl_Http.get_response(vRequest);
loop
begin
-- read the next chunk of binary data
Utl_Http.read_raw(vResponse, vData);
-- append it to our blob for the pdf file
Dbms_Lob.writeAppend
( lob_loc => vBlobRef
, amount => Utl_Raw.length(vData)
, buffer => vData
exception when utl_http.end_of_body then
exit; -- exit loop
end;
end loop;
Utl_Http.end_response(vResponse);
owa_util.mime_header('application/pdf',false);
htp.p('Content-length: ' || dbms_lob.getlength(vBlobRef));
owa_util.http_header_close;
wpg_docload.download_file(vBlobRef);
end runJasperReport;
/}

I am new to working with working with jasperserver to apex interfacing, and also using utl_http with binary data.
But I guess typing my question down helped me figure out a way to make it work for me.
I combined info from http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/misc/RetrievingHTMLandBinariesIntoTablesOverHTTP.php
and from http://sqlcur.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html
to come up with this procedure.
{create or replace PROCEDURE download_file (p_url IN VARCHAR2) AS
l_http_request   UTL_HTTP.req;
l_http_response UTL_HTTP.resp;
l_blob           BLOB;
l_raw            RAW(32767);
BEGIN
-- Initialize the BLOB.
DBMS_LOB.createtemporary(l_blob, FALSE);
-- Make a HTTP request, like a browser had called it, and get the response
l_http_request := UTL_HTTP.begin_request(p_url);
Utl_Http.set_header(l_http_request, 'User-Agent', 'Mozilla/4.0');
l_http_response := UTL_HTTP.get_response(l_http_request);
-- Copy the response into the BLOB.
BEGIN
    LOOP
      UTL_HTTP.read_raw(l_http_response, l_raw, 32767);
      DBMS_LOB.writeappend (l_blob, UTL_RAW.length(l_raw), l_raw);
    END LOOP;
EXCEPTION
    WHEN UTL_HTTP.end_of_body THEN
      UTL_HTTP.end_response(l_http_response);
END;
-- make it display in apex
owa_util.mime_header('application/pdf',false);
htp.p('Content-length: ' || dbms_lob.getlength(l_blob));
owa_util.http_header_close;
wpg_docload.download_file(l_blob);
-- Release the resources associated with the temporary LOB.
DBMS_LOB.freetemporary(l_blob);
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS THEN
    UTL_HTTP.end_response(l_http_response);
    DBMS_LOB.freetemporary(l_blob);
    RAISE;
END download_file; }
Don;t know what I did wrong, but I could not create an 'on-demand' process to call my procedure. I did not understand what it means when it says 'To create an on-demand page process, at least one application level process must be created with the type 'ON-DEMAND'.
so I had to use a blank page with a call to my procedure in the onload - before header process and that seems to work ok.
Thank you,
Mark

APEX vs PHP

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