Clone a pluggable Database with APEX and connect to ORDS 22.x

 This is an update to my older post Clone a pluggable Database with APEX and connect to ORDS, which is still valid for older ORDS-versions before 22.x.

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Sometimes I quickly need another test/dev environment for Apex. There are several ways to get one: snapshot or clone the VM, create one with Liquibase or clone the PDB and link the ORDS to it as described below. This is meant as a short cookbook, find more detailed information on the sites from Jeff Smith or Oracle-Base.

Start by connecting to your CDB and create a clone of the PDB where Apex is installed.

create pluggable database apexpdb2 from apexpdb1
file_name_convert = ('/apexpdb1/', '/apexpdb2/');

alter pluggable database apexpdb2 open;

sho pdbs

alter session set container=apexpdb2;

select * from apex_release;

Double check, that the new PDB has a valid APEX version installed. Add the newly created database in your $TNSADMIN/tnsnames.ora like

APEXPDB2 =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = localhost)(PORT = 1521))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SERVER = DEDICATED)
      (SERVICE_NAME = apexpdb2)
    )
  )

So much for for the database. Now all we have to do is to tell ORDS about the 2nd PDB. There is a chapter in the documentation for this, so the setup is straight forward. For dealing with ORDS, some settings should be made in .bashrc

export ORDS_CONFIG=/u01/ords/config
export ORDS_HOME=/u01/ords-22-2
export PATH=$ORDS_HOME/bin:$PATH

Stop ORDS if it is already running We need to add the DB with the following if we want to use the interactive mode

ords install -i

At the end, ORDS should be running in standalone mode. If you don't like interactive installations, you can do the same with one (loooong) command. First we need a text file with the passwords for the admin and proxy user:

[oracle@orcldevvm-ol8 ~]$ cat password.txt 
oracle
oracle

Then run something like

ords install --db-pool apexpdb2 --db-hostname localhost --db-port 1521 --db-servicename apexpdb2 --feature-sdw true --feature-db-api true --feature-rest-enabled-sql true --admin-user sys --proxy-user --password-stdin < password.txt

Open the new URL with your browser, in my case:

vm:8080/ords/apexpdb2/apex

The difference between the first and all other databases for an ORDS is, that the first one is always accessible without an additional base-path (like vm:8080/ords/apex) whereas the others always need that base-path. If you want a base-path also for the first database, see this posting from Jeff Smith. 

Apex for the second PDB should be available under that new URL.

And there is also a second Database Actions / SQLDeveloper Web under that new URL pattern.

This is done in less than 5 minutes and depending on your environment, this might be faster than cloning the complete VM. And dropping it only takes seconds, what also might be faster than restoring a snapshot of your VM.