Stung by the criticism of our Football Web Pages APEX application, we decide to try to address the various issues raised by end users and peer code review.

1. When clicking ‘Fixtures’, I get ‘ORA-20999: REST Data Source returned an HTTP error: HTTP 400: Bad request’
2. If you enter a Competition only, it works fine. If you enter a Team only, it works fine. If you enter both a ‘Competition’ and ‘Team’, the results look weird. Should ‘Team’ be a cascading LOV based on the ‘Competition’ ?
3. The column names and labels need tidying up. There are a lot of meaningless ID fields displayed.
4. It would be nice to have the option to review past results separately from fixtures in the future.
5. Performance - the Popup LOV’s for Competition and Team are sluggish. Why are they so S L O W ?
6. The navigation menu looks chaotic and ugly.

HTTP 400 error entering Fixtures report¶

This error is because the REST parameter for 'Competition' or 'Teams' is required. When we first run this page, there no values defined for the 'Competition' or 'Teams' parameters which results in the error.

A quick and easy solution is to simply default the competition to 'Premier League'.

Edit the 'Fixtures' page. This is Page 8 in my example. The page number may be different in your APEX environment.

FWP Fixtures

Edit the 'P8_COMPETITION' parameter.

Competition parameter

Filter on 'Default' and configure a default value with 'Type' set to 'Static' with the value set to '1' (Premier League).

Competition parameter default

Save and test the changes. Now if you enter the 'Fixtures' page for the first time, you should see data displayed for the Premier League (instead of the HTTP 400 error).

Competition defaulted

This may not necessarily be the best solution to this problem. For example, I would like the 'Competition' to default to 'Isthmian League - South Central' or the team to default to 'Kingstonian FC'. This requirement could be implemented using a user profile page.

Parameter validation¶

Defaulting the 'Competition' to Premier League may appear to have resolved the issue when neither of the 'Competition' and 'Team' parameters are supplied. However, you can easily reproduce the original issue by selecting the 'Select' value for each parameter and clicking 'Go'.

APEX provides a declarative solution for parameter validation which we can use to resolve this issue.

Navigate to the 'Fixtures' page in App Builder.

Fixtures validation

Click the 'Processing' tab.

Create a Validation called 'ValidateParams'.

Click on 'Validating', then right-click and select 'Create Validation'. Scroll down to the 'Validation' section with Type = 'Expression' and Language = 'PL/SQL'.

Fixtures validation create

I always forget the semantics of the validation expression so I normally click the 'Help' tab in the middle pane for a quick reminder.

To pass the validation, and not raise an error message, when the employee is in department 30 or is a manager:

( :P2_DEPTNO = 30 or :P2_JOB = 'MANAGER' )

In our case, the two parameters are an exclusive OR. The user must either select a Competition or a Team but not both.

Therefore, our validation expression (which specifies when the parameters are valid) is:

(:P4_TEAM is null and :P4_COMPETITION is not null)
or
(:P4_TEAM is not null and :P4_COMPETITION is null)

APEX insists you enter a meaningful error message to the displayed to the end user if the validation fails.

You must select a competition or team.

Test the changes and check the user now gets an error message displayed.

Fixtures validation message

A lot of the FWP API's require this identical combination of parameters. Instead of copying and pasting this PL/SQL block, put it into a stored procedure, so you can reuse this logic. Then, if this logic subsequently changes in the future, you only have to change the code in one place.

Summary¶

We have (finally) addressed a couple of issues originally raised in October 2022.

This is the antithesis of the Agile development methodology but we will endeavour to address the remaining feedback during the course of 2025.

In the last article, we created a simple APEX application fetching data about English football from the Football Web Pages site which provides an authenticated REST API.

However, all I really want to do is to quickly look at Kingstonian's forthcoming fixtures for the next month. Fortunately, there is an FWP API providing that information.

Endpoint: https://football-web-pages1.p.rapidapi.com/fixtures-results.json

• Matches - The current list of matches for a competition/team
• The following parameters may be set:
  • comp - The ID of the competition (note: one of "comp" or "team" is required)
  • team - The ID of the team (note: one of "comp" or "team" is required)

We already have created an APEX report listing all the available Competitions (including the numeric ID values) so it would be useful to have a similar report listing all the Teams.

Teams¶

Endpoint: https://football-web-pages1.p.rapidapi.com/teams.json

• Teams - A list of the teams covered
• The following parameters may be set:
  • comp - The ID of the competition

Create a new REST Data Source called 'FWP Teams' with this endpoint using the 'Football Web Pages' authentication method.

Create a new page 'Teams' with an Interactive Report fetching data from this REST Data Source.

Search for 'Kingstonian' to find out the numeric identifier for this club (236)

Fixtures¶

REST Data Source¶

The Fixtures API can take a query parameter which is either 'competition' or 'team'.

Thus far, we have only used a 'Header' to supply the credentials to access the API.

API query parameters are name-value pairs introduced by a '?'. This is analogous to database queries which filter the results returned by a SQL query in the 'WHERE' clause.

select *
from emp
where name = 'JONES';

The APEX fixtures page should support both of these API query parameters ('competition' and 'team') and enforce that either one or the other is supplied.

Create a REST Data Source for 'Fixtures'

• Rest Source Name: FWP-Fixtures
• Endpoint: https://football-web-pages1.p.rapidapi.com/fixtures-results.json
• Authentication: Football Web Pages

If you click 'Discover', APEX will return an error

ORA-20987: No data found in uploaded file.

This is because the REST Data Source is expecting a parameter and we have not specified one. To fix this, click 'Advanced' and add the required parameter.

• Parameter Type: Query String variable
• Parameter Name: team
• Value: 236 (Kingstonian)

Leave the HTTP method as the default (GET) and click 'Discover'. APEX should display a list of Kingstonian's results and forthcoming fixtures.

Add a second query parameter named 'comp' with no value.

Apply the changes to this REST Data Source.

Fixtures Page¶

Navigate back to Application Builder and create a blank page called 'Fixtures'.

Search region¶

Create a region named 'Search'. Change the template of the 'Search' region to 'Collapsible'. The region template is in the 'Appearance' section.

Create two page items on the Search region

1. Competition
2. Team (uncheck 'Start New Row')

Create a button named 'Go' with the default action of 'Submit Page'. Check the 'Hot' checkbox under 'Appearance'.

Report region¶

Create a new region called 'Fixtures'. This is simply an Interactive report based on the REST source 'FWP Fixtures'.

Run the page. Hopefully, your screen should vaguely resemble this.

Clearly, this is just a checkpoint and not fully functional yet but I like to 'release early and release often' (if only to myself).

Joking apart, this approach is actually useful to demonstrate to an end user what the APEX UI will look like and how you can use standard APEX functionality to search and filter within the Interactive report.

No need to spend days mocking up wire frames of the proposed UI. In APEX, you can present a meaningful prototype using APEX early on.

Plus you can endlessly argue over the title, size, placement and colour of the 'Go' button.

Return to the 'Fixtures' page in Application Builder. Expand the 'Fixtures' region. You will see that APEX has helpfully added a section called 'Parameters'. Expand this and you will see the two query parameters for this REST Data Source exposed here.

Edit the 'comp' parameter. Under 'Value', change the Type to 'Item' and select 'P4_COMPETITION' from the pop-up menu.

Similarly, change the value for the 'team' parameter to the APEX page item P4_TEAM.

Save and run the page. You get an error but this is expected as we have not supplied any APEX page parameters (yet).

Enter '236' into the Search region for 'Team' and click 'Go'. You will see Kingstonian's results and fixtures displayed.

Check this is actually working by changing the team to '1'. This will display results and fixtures for 'Arsenal' in the English Premier League.

This looks promising. APEX truly is a low code solution.

Now let's look at the 'Competition' parameter.

Enter '2' for 'Competition'. This is for the English Championship (neither Kingstonian nor Arsenal play in this league).

Nullify the 'Team' parameter and click 'Go'.

List of Values¶

This report is improving but needs more work. End users typically don't know that they have to enter '1' to get data for Arsenal. The 'Competition' and 'Team' parameters are clearly List of Values so we will implement that now.

Navigate to 'Shared Components' and add the following List of Values for 'Competitions'

• Name: Competitions
• Type: Dynamic
• Data Source: REST Data Source
• Rest Data Source: FWP Competitions
• Return Column: ID
• Display Column: FULL_NAME
• Default Sort: ID

Once an APEX application has a REST Data Source available, it is available to all components (LOV's, reports etc) - just like a conventional local database table.

Create a second LOV for 'Teams'

• Name: Teams
• Type: Dynamic
• Data Source: REST Data Source
• Rest Data Source: FWP Teams
• Return Column: ID
• Display Column: FULL_NAME
• Default Sort: FULL_NAME

Navigate to the 'Fixtures' page and change the page items to use the newly created LOV's.

Change the type of P4_COMPETITION to 'Popup Lov'

Under 'List of Values', select

• Type: Shared Component
• List of Values: FWP-Competitions
• Display Extra Values: Unchecked
• Display Null Value: Checked
• Null Display Value: - Select -

Repeat this process for the P4_TEAM page item using FWP-TEAMS as the LOV.

Run the page. This looks better. Now we can select a Competition and a Team correctly.

You gleefully share your V2 prototype with a colleague for peer code review and her feedback is as follows:

1. When clicking 'Fixtures', I get 'ORA-20999: REST Data Source returned an HTTP error: HTTP 400: Bad request'
2. If you enter a Competition only, it works fine.
3. If you enter a Team only, it works fine.
4. If you enter both a 'Competition' and 'Team', the results look weird. Should 'Team' be a cascading LOV based on the 'Competition' ?
5. The column names and labels need tidying up. There are a lot of meaningless ID fields displayed.
6. It would be nice to have the option to review past results separately from fixtures in the future.
7. Performance - the Popup LOV's for Competition and Team are sluggish. Why are they so S L O W ?
8. The navigation menu looks chaotic and ugly.

In the next article, we will try to address this valid feedback.

Introduction

The last article provided a quick introduction to REST APIs. Now we will use a simple REST API to develop an APEX application using a real world example.

Football Web Pages

I enjoy watching football (soccer). My local team are Kingstonian FC, a non-league team in South West London. Kingstonian play in the seventh tier of English football. Kingstonian's players are semi-professional so the players hold down jobs and train and play part-time.

Football Web Pages (FWP) is an excellent site for all things related to football. The site includes news, fixtures, results for all English leagues (including non league) and the European leagues. I recently noticed FWP provides a REST API.

FWP API¶

Reviewing the FWP API, the first thing to note is whether the API is public (i.e. freely available) which it is and whether it requires authentication (it does).

To access our data you must subscribe to one of our pricing plans (which include a free plan) via Rapid API at the following address:

rapidapi.com/football-web-pages1-football-web-pages-default/api/football-web-pages1

Authentication

When you subscribe via Rapid API you will be given a key, and you must provide this in a header named "X-RapidAPI-Key" with every request.

A lot of API's provided by larger sites offer a facility to issue API calls directly on the site. This enables the developer to examine the specification of the API and experiment with different headers, query parameters and examine the response data in various formats.

FWP doesn't offer this functionality but it's a relatively simple API so we can use Insomnia to experiment with the API.

Normally, I choose the simplest API available - one with no query parameters or headers (other than required for authentication).

For FWP, the 'Competitions' API looks like a decent candidate

Competitions

A list of the competitions covered

The following parameters may be set:

include: One or both of: rounds, teams (default: neither)
Endpoint: https://football-web-pages1.p.rapidapi.com/competitions.json

I'm lazy and so are you so you just enter this endpoint into Firefox. You are thwarted.

The FWP REST API does indeed require authentication so we need Insomnia.

Firstly, we create a folder to store all our FWP API requests. Name the folder 'Football Web Pages'.

Select the newly created folder and click 'click to add first request'.

Double click on the 'New HTTP Request' on the panel on the LHS. Rename this request to 'Competitions'.

Now enter the FWP API endpoint into the GET section in the middle panel. The endpoint (URL) is:

https://football-web-pages1.p.rapidapi.com/competitions.json

Click 'Send'. You get the same authentication error. You feel thwarted and disappointed but this is OK. You haven't provided your credentials yet but the endpoint is correct and the FWP server correctly responded with a '401 - Unauthorized' error.

This API requires that the API key (password, credentials) are supplied in the 'Header' of the API request.

Click on the 'Header' tab in the middle section

Add 'X-RapidAPI-Key' as the 'New Header'. Then add your private API key as the 'Value'. Remember that API headers are simply Name-Value pairs.

Click 'Send'. There is no need to explicitly save the changes to the Headers.

Finally. Success !

Look at the results in the panel on the RHS.

The API request returned a status of '200' (success). The elapsed time for the API request was 213 milliseconds and returned 10KB of data.

FWP APEX application

This demo was created and tested on Oracle's AlwaysFree tier. However, it should also work fine on Oracle's hosted APEX service on apex.oracle.com or a local APEX instance.

Navigate to App Builder

• Click 'Create a new App'
• Click 'New Application'
• Name the application 'Football Web Pages'
• Accept all the default options.

First, we need to configure the Web credentials in APEX to access the FWP REST API's

In APEX, Web Credentials are shared across the workspace. Click 'App Builder - Workspace Utilities - All Workspace Utilities'

Click 'Web Credentials'

Click 'Create'

Enter the following values for the parameters

• Name: Football Web Pages
• Static Identifier: FWP
• Authentication Type: HTTP header
• Credential Name: X-RapidAPI-Key
• Credential Secret: secretapikey
• Comments - FWP API key added on 16 October 2022

The reason I always add the comments field is that many API keys have a limited lifetime (6 months or a year) for security reasons. Often it is useful to know when the client secret was created.

Click 'Create' to save the changes

Next, create a REST data source for the FWP REST API

Navigate to 'App Builder' and click 'Shared Components'.

In the bottom left section, click 'REST Data Sources'.

Click 'Create'

Select 'From scratch' for 'Create REST Data Source' and click 'Next'

Leave the default of 'Simple HTTP' for the value of 'REST Data Source Type'

Enter 'FWP-Competitions' for the 'Name'.

Enter 'https://football-web-pages1.p.rapidapi.com/competitions.json' for 'URL Endpoint'

Leave the optional parameter 'HTTPS Host Name' blank.

Click 'Next'

Leave 'Create New' for the 'Remote Server' parameter

Accept the values helpfully supplied by APEX for 'Base URL' and 'Service URL Path'.

Click 'Next'

Accept the default of 'No Pagination' for 'Pagination Type'.

Click 'Next'

Ensure 'Authentication Required' is checked and select 'Football Web Pages' from the drop-down menu for Credentials.

Click 'Discover'.

APEX has helpfully sent this API request to the FWP server using the Web credentials and provided us with a preview of the data set returned so we can check it looks correct.

Wizards might want to click 'More Detail' but this looks good enough for us to just click 'Create REST Data Source'.

Now we have defined Web credentials and created a REST data source, let's finally create an APEX page displaying the Competitions.

Navigate back to 'App Builder' and select the 'Football Web Pages' application.

Click 'Create Page' and 'Interactive Report' from the Page Wizard.

Click 'Next'

Enter 'Competitions' for the name of the new page.

Under 'Data Source', select 'REST Data Source' and select 'FWP Competitions' from the drop-down menu.

Click 'Create Page'

Run the 'Competitions' page

Summary

That took a while but we have created an APEX application that fetches data from a REST Data Source that requires authentication.

These are valuable building blocks to refine and extend this APEX application when we explore a range of different API's.

a brief history of blogging

I have maintained a blog, on and off, for a long time (since 2005). During that time I have used a wide variety of blogging platforms (Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, Drupal, Tumblr, Django, Posterous, Jekyll, Ghost, Nikola, Hugo)

My blog was a personal blog. Looking back, some posts were essentially micro-blogging (trite one-liners), link blogging (interesting, amusing BBC news stories), endless analysis of Manchester United together with some longer form articles.

Hardly any of my content was technical despite the fact I was an IT consultant. With hindsight, there were a few reasons for this:

• I worked all day staring at a screen working on technical issues. I also travelled a lot in the UK and Europe so when I finally arrived home, my immediate thought wasn't always 'I really need get my laptop out and blog about that database performance issue'.
• 'Imposter syndrome' - whatever topic I thought of, someone, somewhere at some time would have already blogged about the same topic (normally Tim Hall) - better and more intelligently than I ever could. So who would ever read my post and, moreover, what was the point ?
• 'Laziness' - I am inherently lazy. I freely admit it. It's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I think most developers should be lazy (think scripting, think VM's). A technical post takes time because, to have any value, it has to be accurate. Also, it probably needs to include screenshots. Taking a series of screenshots and posting images to a blog is a very time consuming and tiresome exercise. It will also pose a significant issue for the imminent migration to the next blogging platform. A technical post requires much more time and effort than posting about Manchester United's latest victory or the film I saw at the weekend.
• Work. To be honest, this was a minor issue but often I had a nagging doubt that if I had some useful technical knowledge to share, then perhaps I should share this with my colleagues who worked on similar technical issues rather than chasing page views on the Internet. There was also the issue of anonymity; obviously I could mask my identity, my employer's name and the customer name but was this ethical ? Did it breach the corporate social media policy' ?
• Separation - I did occasionally conquer these various self-imposed mental barriers and post a vaguely technical post about Siebel CRM or Oracle. However, while the minuscule element of my readership who were interested might have commented 'At last, a technical post !', I imagined the wider audience (the other six readers) scratching their heads saying 'Well, where's the joke here ? What did he have for breakfast ? Screw that, I'm unsubscribing'.

Hashnode

Clearly, I could have overcome all of these issues by maintaining two separate blogs; a personal blog and a technical blog but, like I said, I'm lazy.

I have a love hate relationship with Twitter. I really dislike the adverts and inserted content and for me, it represents a very dangerous distraction and potential time-sink.

However, a lot of the wonderful APEX community use this platform so I was forced to sign up for the 17th time purely to follow the APEX folks who post valuable content (tagged #orclapex) and freely share their knowledge and expertise.

One of my favourite APEX bloggers, Jon Dixon, indirectly drew my attention to Hashnode.

My private email message to Jon (reproduced here without permission) sums up my initial thoughts on Hashnode

Thanks for inadvertently pointing me at hashnode. I was completely unaware of this platform but I like it as it's Markdown, hooks into GitHub and has a community.

This was useful as I always wanted a technical blog that was separate from my inane stream of consciousness that I post elsewhere.

However, a technical post does take a good deal of time (checking, testing, screenshots, iterating) but ultimately is satisfying I think.

I decided to dip my toe in the water with a post I originally posted on an internal Confluence Wiki.

This was an interesting exercise in itself. My original article was rather rushed and missed out crucial steps (grants on a package).

As I was forced to revisit the original post and review each step from scratch in a clean, vanilla environment, guess what, things didn't work as I described.

Another benefit was that Jon posted a comment saying 'Thanks' which was appreciated and also privately emailed me with a couple of suggestions for minor improvements.

That, to me, is the whole point of a development blog - to hopefully share useful technical knowledge with others but also to have a peer review and learn something new yourself.

Data masking with APEX

Background¶

A common customer requirement is to mask sensitive or personally identifiable data from APEX reports.

Oracle has a 'Data Masking and Subsetting' product that performs this task.

However, for smaller APEX projects, the full blown data masking product might be overkill as it needs familiarity with the product and configuration. This may be time consuming and expensive.

However, we are able to use the PL/SQL package DBMS_REDACT to achieve the same result.

Test Environment¶

• APEX 22.1.5 on-premise (September 2022)
• APEX 22.1.4 (AlwaysFree) (September 2022)

This functionality is available on on-premise APEX environments and the AlwaysFree Oracle Cloud environment.

The data masking functionality is not available on apex.oracle.com as it requires access to the DBMS_REDACT package which is owned by 'SYS'.

User accounts¶

Create two APEX users called MANAGER and INTERN.

Sample data¶

Create an employee table with a couple of sensitive fields for the test scenario.

create table gdpr_emp
(id number generated by default on null as identity,
 first_name varchar2(30),
 last_name varchar2(30),
 ni_number varchar2(10),
 salary number,
 email_address varchar2(50),
 date_of_birth date,
 country varchar2(30),
 credit_card varchar2(16)
);

Insert a sample record.

insert into gdpr_emp
(first_name,
 last_name,
 ni_number,
 salary,
 email_address,
 date_of_birth,
 country,
 credit_card)
values
('Norman',
 'Whiteside',
 'NA564635I',
 35275,
 'norman@gmail.com',
 to_date('01-JAN-1970', 'DD-MON-YYYY'),
 'UK',
 '4321123467899876')
;

APEX application¶

• Create a APEX application named 'GDPR_DEMO'.
• Create a page named 'Employees' with an interactive report based on the 'GDPR_EMP' table.

Run the GDPR_DEMO application and login as 'MANAGER' and 'INTERN'. All fields should be visible on the 'Employees' page.

Create the redaction policy¶

The APEX schema needs privileges to access the DBMS_REDACT package. Login as SYS and grant the privileges.

grant execute on sys.dbms_redact to <APEXDEMO>;

Create the redaction policy. The expression parameter defines which user accounts do not have access to the actual values of the redacted columns.

According to this redaction policy, if the user account is 'INTERN', the CREDIT_CARD column value should be redacted. This means the 'INTERN' user will see zeros in place of the actual values in this column.

begin
  dbms_redact.add_policy(
    object_schema => 'APEXDEMO',
    object_name => 'GDPR_EMP',
    policy_name => 'GDPR Demo',
    expression => 'v(''APP_USER'') = ''INTERN''',
    column_name => 'CREDIT_CARD',
    function_type => dbms_redact.full
   );
end;
/

Add the EMAIL_ADDRESS and SALARY columns by modifying the existing redaction policy.

begin
  dbms_redact.alter_policy(
    object_schema => 'APEXDEMO',
    object_name => 'GDPR_EMP',
    policy_name => 'GDPR Demo',
    action => dbms_redact.add_column,
    column_name => 'EMAIL_ADDRESS',
    function_type => dbms_redact.full
  );

  dbms_redact.alter_policy(
    object_schema => 'APEXDEMO',
    object_name => 'GDPR_EMP',
    policy_name => 'GDPR Demo',
    action => dbms_redact.add_column,
    column_name => 'SALARY',
    function_type => dbms_redact.full
  );
end;
/

You can query the current redaction configuration by querying the REDACTION_COLUMNS, REDACTION_POLICIES and REDACTION_VALUES_FOR_TYPE_FULL views (as 'SYS').

Testing¶

Now login to the GDPR_DEMO application as 'MANAGER'. You will see the full, unredacted data as normal.

Now login as 'INTERN'. You will note that the email address and credit fields are redacted (spaces are displayed while the 'Salary' field is displayed as 0 (zero).

Improvements¶

This is a simple example of data redaction.

Other possible solutions would be to use APEX authorisation schemes to completely hide the sensitive columns from the 'INTERN' user.

This has the advantage of preventing user confusion where the user can see a sensitive field but not the actual value which may be mistaken as a bug.

There could also be finer levels of granularity:

• SuperUser
• HR Manager
• Employee
• Contractor
• Intern

Cleanup¶

To remove the redaction policy

begin
  dbms_redact.drop_policy (
    object_schema => 'APEXDEMO',
    object_name => 'GDPR_EMP',
    policy_name => 'GDPR Demo');
end;
/

Tim Hall recently made a wonderful suggestion that the Oracle community remember the much missed Joel Kallman on 11 October 2021.

My contribution doesn't demonstrate APEX technical wizardry. Instead it's a short story from a real-life customer project implemented using APEX. Just to avoid any potential law suits, this post isn't about Agile development either - more how APEX can be used to quickly respond to changing customer requirements.

One particular post from Joel stuck with me about his attitude to customer service which can be encapsulated in a single line:

'Treat the customer (and really everyone) with respect and dignity'.

I work for Oracle in the UK and am currently working on an APEX project for a customer. This APEX application uses corporate single-sign-on (SSO) for authentication and a simple custom authentication scheme that uses group membership to control access to data (only members of the 'Sales' group can see 'Sales' reports).

Monday - 10:40

The program manager (not the project manager) sends me an email that strikes fear deep into my soul:

'Hey Norman, I need a quick Excel spreadsheet summarising the current list of users and their groups'.

A few years ago, I probably would have done this in SQL*Plus or SQL Developer and struggled to massage the output into the desired format. Now my immediate thought was 'This is a simple APEX report with a control break'.

I quickly created a APEX report and clicked 'Actions - Download' to quickly produce the Excel spreadsheet. I then had to waste time transferring the file before finally emailing the spreadsheet to the customer for review.

I had produced an Excel spreadsheet and it was undeniably 'quick' so I had clearly met both requirements. Time to put the kettle on.

Monday - 11:57

'That's great. Thanks but I also see to see members of the 'Admin' group'.

A trivial addition to the WHERE clause and I was about to repeat the whole tortuous process until I remembered we had already configured the Email Delivery Service on OCI for a different requirement.

I checked the output and again clicked 'Actions - Download' but checked the 'Send as Email' option.

As I simply love recursion, I sent the program manager a FAX to expect an automated email from the APEX bot imminently.

A nice feature of 'Send as Email' is that the recipient gets a link to the APEX report in addition to the Excel spreadsheet as a file attachment.

Monday - 15:32

'That's great. Thanks for the prompt turnaround'.

Tuesday - 09:17

'Hey Norman - I shared this Group Membership report with Julie and here's a list of more people who need to be added to the Admin group before the production deployment. Please send Julie and myself a copy of the updated report'.

Again, I added the list of users to the Admin group and sent the email adding Julie on 'Cc:'.

Tuesday - 13:47

'That's fantastic. Julie has now shared the Membership report with Graham from Operational Support and he was wondering whether you can email this report to him daily from now until a month after production deployment'.

Again, APEX provides an out of the box solution for this called 'Report Subscriptions'.

Not so much 'low code' as 'no code'. I simply added a 'Subscription' to the 'Membership' report and emailed it to Graham daily starting now and ending on 30 November.