And do you known a good APEX book you would recommand ?
(Book, Doc, tutorial, any resource you consider good)

Thanks in advance, and thanks again for everything you do.
I love your site.

I pre-ordered that book in July '07...
In the meantime it seems like a joke for me.
A book that was announced for August '07, which has not been released in September '08 and amazon already gives 37% discount on it.

So there is light at the end of the tunnel ;-)

Tom,

as you have already reviewed the book can you please tell me if there is a chapter about security and not only the build in security from apex but also if you need to interact with other Webapplications.
For example passing a user from a JSB Webapp to an Apex app without the need to re-authenticate. In one word: singel sign on.

Regads
Wolfgang

Thanks a lot Tom.

Of course I meant JSP not JSB ;-)

Both apps are using LDAP authentication.

Regards
Wolfgang

Our Users are administrated in an active directory domain service. In Apex we use LDAP authentication and role authorisation.
The jsp app also accesses the ADDS (over the LDAP protocoll).

Now the problem is how we can pass-through the already authenticated and authorised user from one Webapplication to the other. The easiest way would be to add a link and let the user simple login into the apex app again. But hmm we're in 2008 that's not the way to go - at least in my opinion.

As a quick workaround I created another apex application without any authorization, copied the page into it and that it was. As it is an internal used App and the information shown is not confidential it is ok - for this time.

But generally I'm thinking about a practicable way to pass a user from one application to another. JSP/Servlet based App -> APEX and perhaps also the other way. NTLM may be a possible solution but of course windows dependent. Cockies may be another way.

I would be interested if there are some working solutions out there. Which problems did occur, how much time was spend to adopt this solution...
To make a long story short: All the things Manager and Architects want to know when you recommend them to integrate Apex into the infrastructure of one of the worlds largest insurance companies.

Also I have to say, that I'm not a pure web developer. I'm used to java and PL/SQL (prefering PL/SQL) and we are using apex since V2.2 (the XE effect) for some relatively small apps with 5-15 pages. But now "The Apex thing" becomes bigger and bigger and we begin touching the hemisphere of the company wide used web apps.

Now we have two possibilities: Stop here and go back to the small isolated applications used by a handful people or start interacting. I would prefer the last one.

Regards
Wolfgang

Of course, in my (original) question, I left out testing, which Tom added, "And trying things out to see how they really work." I think that is one of the most important thing I have learned from Tom, that if you have some idea of the concepts, testing is easy (not so easy for me as for Tom, but much less work than I imagined). Once you understand how a multi-column (b-tree) index is actually built, the idea that Oracle may ignore it when the return set is not predicted on the "leading edge" makes sense. Your ideas of what to test have to come from the concepts (and Tom's books are full of concepts that have not changed), but Tom shows again and again how little time and code it takes to test. Seeing one neat trick with sql%rowcount (big_table),can give you a handle on that which will benefit you many times, as will learning that "when others" is always followed by "raise" (at least). Another nice thing about the tests is that Tom makes them work. If you don't know what part of the test does, you can cut it out an run that part and see exactly what it is doing. I am no expert on memory, but typing the tests in and making them run for you must make it 3-4 times more likely that you learn it; at least that is how it works for me.

.exrc
ab wor WHEN OTHERS RAISE;

Hi Tom,

Do you belive that it is possible to build the same kind of database application with APEX as we have done in the past using SQL*Forms, like an account system or a HR application for a medium-size or large company ?

Thanks for your time