Reusable components in Oracle APEX

Question

I'm a seasoned Oracle Forms developer and today I took my very first look at Oracle APEX. To be honest, I just quickly browsed a book by Apress intended for a beginner audience, but what I noticed is there's no mention to how to create reusable components. In my experience as an Oracle Forms developer I dealt with libraries, object libraries and referenced objects from other modules, but I didn't find anything like this in the book I browsed today. So, I would like to know from you - experienced Oracle APEX developers - if there is a way to create "real" reusable components, meaning not to just make a "copy" (or export) but creating a component to be reference from many APEX application in order to modify that component just once and see the changes in all the application referring to it.

I suppose that this must be a not so easy task to do in APEX because it is a database centric application, but I'd really appreciate some hints about the best practices to stay DRY. I do know that APEX was not designed with agile development in mind, but I think components reuse should be a must in every "rapid" development framework.

Thank you very much for the precious hints you'll be giving to me.

Answer 1

APEX doesn't offer an equal solution to Forms Object Libraries, but a "Subscription" Concept where you can Subscribe Shared Components (LOVs, Templates, Authorization, ...) from a Master-Application within your Workspace.

A second possibility is the use of Plugins in APEX. A Plugin can be anything you put on a Page, or even a Process containing some Logic. Plugins are often used to add new functionality to APEX (e.g. a Maps Region, grouped Select Lists, Modal Windows, ...) but they are also very good for reuse of Code.

Not sure why you assume APEX wasn't built with Agile in mind and that cannot work because APEX runs in a Database. I don't see anything in APEX that doesn't work with an agile Approach.

Anyways, to answer your question: check out Subscriptions and Plugins.