Some preliminary steps
I used the EMPLOYEES table
in the HR sample schema that comes with Oracle9i and later. You may have
to unlock the HR account (and set a password). Login as HR and grant select on
EMPLOYEES to PUBLIC (or the user OBE). Login as OBE and create a table named
HR_EMPLOYEES using CTAS (create table as select). The user OBE should have a
table with 107 rows (it is a larger version of Scott's EMP table).
Back in HTML DB, navigate to
the Home page and click the Build icon. In the list of available applications,
select the Collection Showcase.
To add a page to this
application, click on the Wizards tab on the top of the page. At the next
window, click Tabular Form in the Forms area.
Select the OBE schema and
click Next. The flowchart to the left shows where you are in the process.
At the next page, click on
the flashlight or search button to see the available tables and views. Select
the HR_EMPLOYEES table (it should be at the bottom of the list), and then click
Next.
Select all of the columns.
At the next page, I allowed
everything but the employee ID number and the hire date to be updateable.
Select the EMPLOYEE_ID column for the primary key.
At this page, you have to
select a display type. I chose the alternating colors (and changed the Region
Title from Tabular Form to ACME Employees and added a different page name).
Skip the tabs page by
clicking Next. At the Buttons Label page, "Cancel" for cancel and "Submit" for
submit works for me.
At the Identify Branching
page, the choices you make (which do not really matter in this example) are
where you are sent after a successful submit or a failure. I chose pages 5 and
1. Click Next to move on to the Confirm page, and when finished reviewing the
selections, click Finish.
Let's run the page and see
what we get. Click Run Page.
You should see a page
similar to what is shown below (the one below already reflects a change
mentioned next).
Neena (employee 101) was
married last week, and her new last name is Smith. The boxed fields are what can be
updated, so enter the updates and click Submit. Depending on your branch page
choice, you may not come back to this page. Regardless of the branching
destination, you should see a confirmation of the change at the top of the
destination window.
In Closing
Overall, creating the
tabular form was not too painful. As you can see, the choices under the Wizards
tab are fairly extensive. Like other Oracle applications, these wizards are
meant to be run only once (modifications are made using other means).
The following wizards
build complete page(s). These wizards are one-time generators. The wizards
generate multiple attributes, for example, a report wizard generates one page,
one region, and multiple buttons. After generation, page attributes can be
customized to your exact needs.
In the next article, we will
cover the steps to upgrade HTML DB to version 1.6 (including the patch), and
look at creating a different web application and validate Mr. Kyte's claim that
"It is just too easy." In the meantime, install the Web Service demo and note
its similarity to the look and feel of the Ask Tom Web site.
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