Oracle Forms Tabular Data-Blocks in APEX

I’ve worked with Oracle Forms for about 13 years and so when I first looked at learning APEX my thought process was “I used to do this in Oracle Forms, how do I do it in APEX?”. My early learning consisted of looking for concepts in which I was familiar with and then learning how to achieve it in APEX.

One of the most commonly used components I used in Oracle Forms were the multi-row tabular style data-blocks. This is often used for representing multiple rows of data in a “report style” layout. It’s a good choice for showing the results of a search filter or child records from a selected parent record.

The closest alternative in APEX is the Tabular Form. My ideas are illustrated in a video blog which shows the creation an APEX Tabular Form region and then using it to insert and modify table data.

APEX has several advantages over Forms.

• Extremely modern user interface.
• Highly configurable wizard supporting multiple primary keys, ROWIDs and supporting several ways of obtaining a primary key value.
• Customisable using several templates and CSS.
• Supports multi-row deletes.
• Supports row pagination.
• Supports Row Level Validation with “go to error” quick links.
• Supports branching to other pages following change.
• Uncluttered toolbar menu; only implementing the relevant features for the tabular form.

Author: Matt Mulvaney

Job Title: Senior Oracle APEX Development Consultant

Bio: Matt is an experienced APEX solution designer having designed numerous complex systems using a broad range of Oracle Technologies. Building on his previous experience of Oracle Forms & PL/SQL, he is entirely focused on providing functionally rich APEX solutions. Matt promotes APEX as a software platform and openly shares best practises, techniques & approaches. Matt has a passion for excellence and enjoys producing high quality software solutions which provide a real business benefit.