Installing Oracle Apex 4.0 on 11.2g

Over the past few days I’ve been trying to install Oracle Apex 4 on my 11.2g database.  I say trying as I’ve made a number of attempts with no success. I started with the install instructions that come with Apex 4. Generally Oracle installs and install instructions have improved greatly since the 6, 7 and 8i versions.

I had high hopes of an easy install (as indicated by the various Oracle Apex books), but no matter what version of the install instructions I found there always seemed to be a step missing.

I finally came across one set of instructions that worked for me. The following steps are what I performed to get Apex 4 working.

1. Download Apex 4 from OTN to the directory

c:\apex_download

2. Unzip the Apex 4 download file. It will create the directory

c:\apex_download\Apex

3. Login into SQL*Plus as SYS with SYSDBA

4. Run the Apex 4 install script

c:\apex_download\Apex\apexins.sql SYSAUX SYSAUX TEMP /i/

where SYSAUX is the tablespace for Apex, TEMP is the temporary tablespace and /i/ is needed for possible upward compatability

This steps can take up to 30 minutes to run

5. Load the Apex images into the database.

    - Got to the c:\apex_download\Apex directory.

    - Log into SQL*Plus as SYS with SYSDBA

    - run   @apxldimg.sql

    - You will be asked to enter the directory for the images. Make sure that you enter the correct directory, otherwise it will not work. In my case it is

              c:\apex_download

6. Run the Configuration script. This will set up the XDB HTTP connection details.

        @apxconf.sql

   - enter the port number : 8080

   - password

7. Unlock the required schema

SQL> ALTER USER ANONYMOUS ACCOUNT UNLOCK;
SQL > ALTER USER XDB ACCOUNT UNLOCK;
SQL > ALTER USER APEX_040000 ACCOUNT UNLOCK;
SQL > ALTER USER FLOWS_FILES ACCOUNT UNLOCK;
SQL > ALTER USER APEX_PUBLIC_USER ACCOUNT UNLOCK;

8. Open Apex. Open your browser and enter

     http://localhost:8080/apex

     there is a default workspace created

      Workspace = internal

      Username = admin

       Password = admin

6. Change the password. The fist time you login you will be prompted to change the password. The new password needs to have a number, upper and lower case characters and one special character

7. To get the the Apex Admin page

     http://localhost:8080/apex/apex_admin