Oracle APEX - an Override for the BUG 36847892

The Oracle APEX team received an report and evidenced a BUG no 36847892 named "PACKAGE COMPILE ERROR FROM SUPPORTING OBJECT AND SQL WORKSHOP IF TABLE TYPE DECLARED"

The problem is that You gen an error when You try to compile the package which contains a table type definition.

For example:

Hopefully, this BUG should be fixed soon.

But meanwhile there is an override for this BUG.

Simply create another type of type RECORD at the beginning of the code and it should compile without an error. No need to use this type later in the code... just let it sit there for the time being 😸

For example like this:

Oracle Database - an Issue with wrapped Packages

Today I've been investigating an issue with wrapped packages, which refused to compile on my target database.

The error was PLS-00753: malformed or corrupted wrapped unit

But there was no reason for that. Only few packages were problematic while others compiled without an error.

I tried to wrap packages in 2 ways:

• from the database using dbms_ddl.wrap function
• from the Linux OS command line (available on https://www.apexofficeprint.com/wrap/)

But the result was the same. An error. 

But at the end I figured out what the problem is and there is a way how to override it. 😎

And it seems that this is a database issue. My target database is the OCI database version

Oracle Database 19c Enterprise Edition Release 19.0.0.0.0 - Production 

Version 19.24.0.1.0

The last line of wrapped code is completely filled and it seems that the database is unable to unwrap it correctly... like it can not determine where the code ends?!

But if I add ";" character at the end of the code... or split the last line in two lines... then it can be compiled without problem! See pics below:

The solution with splitting the last line into two lines solves an issue in Oracle APEX 24.1 too.

So, for a permanent solution simply add one or two empty lines of code to Your source code before wrapping. This will extend the wrapped code into a new line.

Produced wrapped source looks like this and it can be compiled on the target database without any manual alterations:

Oracle APEX - open a Page in another Application from navigation Menu

Today I developed an application in Oracle APEX for our customer and bumped into an interesting issue.

I wanted to create a navigation menu item to open a page from another application. But it seems that it was not supported out-of-the-box!

APEX provided me with only 2 options to chose - either a page from the current application or a custom URL. There was no option to open a page from another application, which is an ordinary functionality in other parts of an APEX (button, link column in IR...).

So, I needed to make an override of this limitation.

The approach was pretty simple but effective:

• First I created an application item to store an URL of a target page in another application
• Then I created an application computation to compute the URL using APEX_PAGE API
• Then I selected an URL as a target type 
• And finally I used a calculated application item's value in a form of substitute variable as a target URL value

An example.

Created an application item to store a target URL:

Created an application calculation to calculate an URL:

Set up a menu list entry attributes and use an application item's value as a substitute string:

And it works like a charm!