Friday, 16 December 2022

The Database Developer VM: installing Apex 22.2 and ORDS 22.4

This post is part of my Oracle Developer VM  Project series. It is not meant to replace the official documentation in any way and what I describe is no recommended configuration. It is only meant to be a guide, if you follow my DB Developer VM Project and want to add these services to your VM.

Part 1: Install Apex

According to the documentation, memory_target needs to be set to at least 300M for Apex, but in my setup the database won't start with this amount of memory. I get the following error:

ORA-00838: Specified value of MEMORY_TARGET is too small, needs to be at least 6304M

So first, we will set that parameter to the required value (or higher, if you need it).

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alter system set memory_target='6304M' scope=spfile;
startup force;

If the database won't start up because you run into a ORA-00845: MEMORY_TARGET not supported on this system then your shared memory (/dev/shm) is configured too low. Checking with df -h will show a value smaller than 6.304 MB. To solve this, run

mount -t tmpfs shmfs -o size=10G /dev/shm

and startup the database again.

This should give you the following: 
Download the Apex install bundle and unzip it (eg. to /u01), which creates an apex folder. In the unpacked folder run the installer

sqlplus sys/your_password@orclpdb as sysdba @apexins sysaux sysaux temp /i/

Leave the session open and create the Apex Admin user by running @apxchpwd.sql.
Unlock the APEX_PUBLIC_USER and change his password, which has been randomly set at installation

alter user apex_public_user identified by oracle account unlock;

Still in the same session, run @apex_rest_config.sql and set both passwords for the APEX_LISTENER user and the APEX_REST_PUBLIC_USER user.

To use web services and for sending email, network services need to be enabled. Copy the following from the documentation and run it:

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BEGIN    
   DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.APPEND_HOST_ACE(
      host => '*',
      ace => xs$ace_type(privilege_list => xs$name_list('connect'),
                         principal_name => 'APEX_220200',
                         principal_type => xs_acl.ptype_db));
END;

Part 2: Install ORDS

First, we need to make some settings. Add the following to .bashrc and source it.

export _JAVA_OPTIONS="-Xms3000M -Xmx3000M"
export ORDS_CONFIG=/u01/ords-config
export ORDS_HOME=/u01/ords-22-4
export PATH=$ORDS_HOME/bin:$PATH

Create both directories:

mkdir /u01/ords-22-4
mkdir /u01/ords-config

Download the latest ORDS from https://download.oracle.com/otn_software/java/ords/ords-latest.zip and unzip the contents to your target directory (eg. /u01/). Optional rename the ords directory from the archive and add the ORDS version number, eg. ords-22-4 (and reflect that in the $ORDS_HOME variable in .bashrc). This makes it easier to switch versions when neccesary.
As $PATH and $ORDS_CONFIG are already set, from anywhere run
  
ords install --interactive

ORDS will ask for some configuration parameters. In most cases, you can just accept the defaults.
If you have followed my guide so far, the only parameters, that need to be set, are:
  • Enter the database service name [orcl]: orclpdb
  • Provide database username with administrator privileges: sys (and your password)
  • Enter the APEX static resources location:/u01/apex/images/
After the setup, ORDS will keep running in standalone mode. We are not done yet, but give it a try to check if everything went fine so far. Wait until the ORDS has completely started: 
Open Firefox and enter http://localhost:8080/ords, that should give you the Apex login page (as this is the first call, it will take a few seconds).
Looking at the ORDS terminal window, you will see the following warnings:
Though this is not a production environment, I prefer to configure the system to run without these warnings. At least it makes it easier to notice, if something really goes wrong. In this single user environment, we can set both parameters to lower values like below. 
Go to /u01/ords-config/global/ and edit settings.xml. Add the following lines before the closing </properties>:

<entry key="jdbc.MaxLimit">20</entry>
<entry key="jdbc.InitialLimit">10</entry>

I also got the following error:
INFO Disabling document root because the specified folder does not exist: /u01/ords-config/global/doc_root
To get rid of this INFO either create that directory or edit /u01/ords-config/global/settings.xml and set standalone.doc.root to an existing folder.

Sometimes I ran into errors were all like WARNING The pool named: |apex|al| is invalid and will be ignored: The username or password for the connection pool named |apex|al|, are invalid, expired, or the account is locked
Probably I messed up my passwords when running the installer. This can be fixed by setting the passwords for the following users (and unlocking them, just in case):

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alter user ORDS_PUBLIC_USER account unlock;
alter user APEX_PUBLIC_USER account unlock;
alter user APEX_LISTENER account unlock;
alter user APEX_REST_PUBLIC_USER account unlock;
alter user ORDS_PUBLIC_USER identified by oracle;
alter user APEX_PUBLIC_USER identified by oracle;
alter user APEX_LISTENER identified by oracle;
alter user APEX_REST_PUBLIC_USER identified by oracle;

Now ORDS should come up without errors.

Just to double check that everything is there, call http://localhost:8080/ords/sql-developer
Of course, you need a rest enabled schema to log in. That's it, everything is running.
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