It’s always nice to dip your toes in the familiar with Oralce Apex 5 being out for over a year now I thought I’d validate an old blog I wrote about running Apex in the Cloud.
Oracle do provide cloud options if you just want to try it out but like any tech geek I always like to have my own if I can and it’s not too much effort.
Streamlined install steps are as follows:
Start an EC2

• Amazon Linux AMI
• t2.small for the instance type
• 20GB storage
• Set up a security group with ports 8080 and 22 open

Download

• Apex 5 (5.0.3 was used in my test)
• Oracle XE Database 11g R2 for Linux to your local machine
• Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) (3.0.5 was used in my test)
• Java 8   (x64 version 8u92 was used in my test)

Copy the downloaded files to /tmp
Connect to your new server and run the following commands

sudo su
yum update
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1536 count=1572864
chmod 0600 /swapfile
/sbin/mkswap /swapfile
/sbin/swapon /swapfile
/sbin/swapon -s
cd /tmp
unzip oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip
rpm -Uvh Disk1/oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm
/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure <****Accept all default prompts in this script but enter a password when prompted***>

ln -s /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin/sqlplus /usr/bin/sqlplus

Edit the file /etc/profile and insert the following lines at the bottom

export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe
export ORACLE_HOME
export ORACLE_SID=XE
export NLS_LANG=AMERICAN.AL32UTF8
export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin
Save the file then run thw following

Save the file then run the following command

. /etc/profile

To test that the DB is working run the following

sqlplus sys as sysdba
exit

Next, upgrade Apex to version 5. Note this is for a development environment and as part of this process I turn off password expiry and is not recommended for a production environment.

cd /tmp/
unzip apex_5.0.3_en.zip
cd /tmp/apexsqlplus /nolog
CONNECT SYS as SYSDBA
@apexins.sql SYSAUX SYSAUX TEMP /i/
sqlplus /nolog
CONNECT SYS as SYSDBA
ALTER USER APEX_PUBLIC_USER ACCOUNT UNLOCK;ALTER USER APEX_PUBLIC_USER IDENTIFIED BY <new_password>;
ALTER PROFILE DEFAULT LIMIT PASSWORD_LIFE_TIME UNLIMITED;
EXEC DBMS_XDB.SETHTTPPORT(0);
@apex_rest_config.sql <***enter passwords when prompted***>DECLARE
 ACL_PATH  VARCHAR2(4000);
BEGIN
 -- Look for the ACL currently assigned to '*' and give APEX_050000
 -- the "connect" privilege if APEX_050000 does not have the privilege yet.
 SELECT ACL INTO ACL_PATH FROM DBA_NETWORK_ACLS
  WHERE HOST = '*' AND LOWER_PORT IS NULL AND UPPER_PORT IS NULL;
 IF DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.CHECK_PRIVILEGE(ACL_PATH, 'APEX_050000',
    'connect') IS NULL THEN
     DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.ADD_PRIVILEGE(ACL_PATH,
    'APEX_050000', TRUE, 'connect');
 END IF;
EXCEPTION
 -- When no ACL has been assigned to '*'.
 WHEN NO_DATA_FOUND THEN
 DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.CREATE_ACL('power_users.xml',
   'ACL that lets power users to connect to everywhere',
   'APEX_050000', TRUE, 'connect');
 DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.ASSIGN_ACL('power_users.xml','*');
END;
/
COMMIT;
EXIT;

Next Install Apache Tomcat 7 Oracle Restful Data Services

yum install tomcat7
--yum remove java-1.7.0-openjdk
--yum remove java
rpm -i /tmp/jdk-8u92-linux-x64.rpm
mkdir /u01/app/oracle/product/ords
cd /u01/app/oracle/product/ords
unzip /tmp/ords.3.0.5.124.10.54.zip
java -jar -Duser.timezone=UTC  ords.war
Enter the location to store configuration data: /u01/app/oracle/product/
Enter the name of the database server [localhost]:
Enter the database listen port [1521]:
Enter 1 to specify the database service name, or 2 to specify the database SID [1]:
Enter the database service name: xe
Enter the database password for ORDS_PUBLIC_USER: [new password here]
Enter the username with SYSDBA privileges to verify the installation [SYS]:
Enter the database password for SYS:
If using Oracle Application Express or migrating from mod_plsql then you must enter 1 [1]:
Enter the database password for APEX_PUBLIC_USER:
Enter 1 to specify passwords for Application Express RESTful Services database users (APEX_LISTENER, APEX_REST_PUBLIC_USER) or 2 to skip this step [1]:
Enter the database password for APEX_LISTENER:
Enter the database password for APEX_REST_PUBLIC_USER:
Enter 1 if you wish to start in standalone mode or 2 to exit [1]:2chown tomcat /u01/app/oracle/product/ords/defaults.xml
cp ords.war /usr/share/tomcat7/webapps
mv /tmp/apex/images /usr/share/tomcat7/webapps/i

Edit the /usr/share/tomcat7/conf/tomcat7.conf
add the following line to the file

JAVA_OPTS="-Duser.timezone=UTC"

Change the following line from

JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/jre"

to

JAVA_HOME="/usr/java/jdk1.8.0_92/"

Finally, run the following command.

service tomcat7 start

You’re done, you can now connect to Apex from your web browser by going to http://<IP of server>:8080/ords.

Your initial credentials will be

• Workspace: internal
• User: admin
• Password: Same as your initial SYS database password

If you have any problems check the logs here /usr/share/tomcat7/logs to see if there is anything obvious.
This process has a few java related tweaks that I would have preferred not do, but there seem to be conflicts with the OpenJDK that AWS Linux likes to use by default. I think I will try another flavour of Linux when time permits to see if I have the same problems.
All the code, all the fun – Ben