Application Translation Not Working - Primary Key Error

Question

I had created an application translation to Spanish but it wasn't displaying my Spanish translation. I was going to try and redo it so I tried creating a new mapping and then seeding the translatable text. I got a primary key error "ORA-20001: Seed insert error: WWV_FLOW_TOPLEVEL_TABS.TAB_TEXT ORA-00001: unique constraint (FLOWS_030100.WWV_FLOW_TRANSLATABLE_TEXT_PK) violated".
I went in and deleted what I had done through APEX for this app and tried to create a new application but still get the primary key error when I try to seed it. I gave it a new translated application ID but that doesn't seem to help. Anyone have this problem or no of the reason I'm having this issue?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi David,
Thanks for reporting this. This was an interesting problem to solve.
As it turns out, it was a logic error in Application Express (i.e., bug). When deleting a translation mapping, the associated strings in the translation repository would be deleted for that application, but if and only if you had actually published the application.
I think this is why you could never get Spanish working properly - you had never actually published the application the first time. So I'll bet what you did is deleted the original mapping, then you recreated the mapping for the same language but with a different translated application ID. Since you had never published the application from the original translation mapping, and there were orphaned rows in the translation repository, you encountered a "collision" when you tried to seed the second time with the different translated application ID.
Your action of deleting rows from WWV_FLOW_TRANSLATABLE_TEXT$ cleaned up these orphaned rows. As you stated, this isn't recommended to perform DML on the underlying APEX tables. A couple alternatives could have been:
1) Before deleting the translated application mapping, actually publish the application and then delete the mapping.
2) If you had deleted the mapping already, you could recreate the mapping for the same language and with the original translated application ID. Then, publish the application and then go back and delete the mapping.
I realize all this sounds crazy. But it was only an issue because you had not actually published the application. Not your fault, though, as this is a bug in APEX.
This bug will be fixed in Application Express 4.0. This way, you won't have to worry about if you published or didn't publish. The orphaned rows will be cleaned up when you delete a mapping.
Thanks again for reporting this.
Joel