How can i allow a set of user to access to an application

Question

At the moment i have an application that only i can login as the adminstator and i want to be able to let a group of students run the application only (no editing of the application).
I then have a form that loads straight after the login that should show the details of the student that has just logged in.
I already have a students table so is it just a case of adding a password field to the table and pointing the login screen to check this table? If so how can i then set their access to read only?

Answer 1

This is what I did... it is quick and dirty!
1 exported the app "Project"
2 imported the app "project" and renamed it "project2". Doing this means that I won't cause any damage to his current application
3 examined authentication- currently set to Application Express. Application Express requires that the user and passwords match account created in the admin section of application express.
4 We're after a scheme that authorises based on a table of users in the application workspace schema. The authentication scheme just needs to know the name of a function which has a standard signiture such as fn_auth(p_username varchar2, p_password varchar2) return boolean;
In the SQL Workshop I looked at the "user" table to be used and noticed that it does not contain a loginname column so for this example based this on a case insensitive first name and last name concatenation (with a space in the middle).
Now we need to add a simple authenticate function...
create or replace fn_auth (p_username varchar2, p_password varchar2) return boolean is
begin
for x in(select 1 from student where upper(trim(first_name' 'family_name))=upper(p_username) and upper(password)=p_password) loop
return true;
end loop;
return false;
end;
5 And finally modify the app to use this new function. Add a new scheme and in the Login Processing section of the ahthentication scheme modify the function to
return fn_auth
6 As an aside, I also added a report of user names and their passwords which is shown on page 101 if the user is running in debug mode. Obviously, this would need to be stripped out when the app was released to production. This will not show if the URL is navigated to and the user is not logged in as an APEX developer by using a condition based on a funtion body and the following to determine whether the app is being run for a user or for a developer:
IF APEX_Application.g_edit_cookie_session_id IS NOT NULL THEN return true;
ELSE
return false;
END IF;