Beginning Oracle® Application Express

10.2. Structure of the APEX Environment

The next main topic to cover is to learn how to deploy your completed application. You are already familiar with the various components of an APEX application, but to fully understand deployment options, you should fully understand the structure of the APEX environment.

As you already know, APEX applications run on an Oracle database. In fact, the APEX environment can be understood as a hierarchy of environments, as shown in Figure 10-3.

Figure 10-3. Figure 10-3

At the top level is the Oracle database instance. An Oracle instance is the entire world, the runtime environment of the Oracle database. When a user connects to any application in any workspace, or data in any schema, they are connecting to the Oracle instance. The Oracle instance contains the common systems, such as SQL parsers, the PL/SQL runtime environment, the overall security system and the network software which handles client connections.

Within the Oracle instance are individual APEX workspaces. An APEX workspace is like a virtual private database, fencing off all the information within the workspace from unauthorized access. A workspace can contain one or more applications, as well as shared objects that are used by one or more applications within the workspace. APEX users are also defined within a workspace, as you did in Chapter 9 on security.

An APEX application is ...