Hello. Welcome to Oracle APEX Foundation course, Migrating Application Development Between Environments covering exporting and importing APEX applications. My name is Chaitanya, I'm a product manager on the Oracle APEX Product Development team. APEX zones everywhere your Oracle Database maps. APEX enables you to seamlessly shift applications to and from the Oracle Database, Cloud Service, public and private clouds and On-Premise, and you can deploy anywhere your Oracle database logs. So, let's learn how to export and import APEX applications. In this lesson, you'll learn about APEX Application Migration, steps involved in moving an application from one instance to another Instance, exporting and application, importing the application into the target environment. Migrating Application Development Between Environments. An APEX application can really be moved from one environment to another. It is a normal practice to move an application from development to test and then to production. This generally involves exporting the application from development and importing it into the test for production environment.

Along with the application definition, you also need to export the underline database objects and the synced data. So, you'll need to create the DDL as well as the DML scripts. Migrating where you do your application development, for example from On-Prem to the cloud is much the same as the steps required for rolling out a new version of your application to test or production. Note that you cannot import an APEX application into your earlier release of APEX. For example, if you're exporting an application from a cloud instance that has APEX 22.1, you cannot import that application into your on-premises instance that is only running APEX 21.1. You will need to update the target APEX environment prior to importing the application. You can check the version of APEX in both your current development environment and the environment you are migrating to. In any release of APEX, you can check the bottom right corner for the version information. To move an application from one APEX instance to another, you must move both the metadata and the supporting objects. Now, let's quickly review the steps involved in moving an application from one environment to another. As a first step, you package the application definition with its supporting objects to create a custom application. And then you export this customer application.

Finally, we import the application into the target APEX instance and then install it. To create a custom application, you must create installation scripts that define your application supporting objects including database objects, images, and see data and any pre-installation validations. We define these objects and the installation and de-installation scripts and the messages that appear with the user installs or de-installs on the supporting object's page of the application that you want to export. Exporting an Application. To export an application, navigate to the application homepage and then click 'Export/Import'. Then click 'Export. On the Export Application page, review the settings and also review the export preferences. In this example, the 'Export as ZIP' switch is turned off, so the application is exported as a single SQL file. Once you complete review the export preferences, click 'Export'. You can now see the exported application file. You can also export an application as a ZIP file. For this, on the Export Application page, make sure that 'Export as ZIP' switch is turned on. Then once you click the 'Export' button, your application export is a ZIP file.

Now, that you understood how to export an APEX application, let's learn how to import this exported application into the target APEX environment. On the target APEX instance, log in to your workspace. On the workspace homepage, click 'App Builder', and then click 'Import'. We can now either select or drag and drop the exported application file. Click 'Next'. Review the Import page, and then click 'Next'. Review the Install page and now click 'Install Application'. The application should be successfully installed now. You can now run the application, simply run application. Now it's demo time. So, lets go ahead and watch how to export an APEX application and then navigate to the target instance, import this application, and install the application. Migrating an APEX Application from one instance to another. Let's first learn how to export an APEX application from an instance. On the workspace homepage, go to App Builder and you see here Projects App application. So, lets click the application name. You are on the application homepage right now. So, just click 'Export/Import' and then you can export the application from here. However, before doing so lets click 'Supporting Objects'.

In this example, you actually wanted to package the application along with the underlying database objects and save data. So, you have created some installation scripts already. Click 'Installation Scripts'. You can see the installation scripts for tables as well as for data. So, now when you export this application, application along with the underlying database objects and see data is exported and you can import the same into your target APEX instance. You can also see there is a Deinstallation Script here just in case if you want to de-install the supporting objects. So, lets now go ahead and then export this application. Going to application homepage again and then let's click 'Export/Import'. Selecting 'Export' and then click 'Next'. Review the export application settings here. You can actually export this application as a zip file by turning on the 'Split into Multiple Files' switch. In this example, let's turn this off, scroll down and you see Export Preferences. For Export Supporting Object Definitions, you see three options. In this example, let's select 'Yes' and Install on Import Automatically'. Scroll up a bit and then let's click 'Export'.

The application is now exported successfully. And now let's import the previously exported application into the target APEX instance. So, logging into the target APEX workspace. And then go to App Builder. Click 'Import'. You can either select a file or drag and drop here. So, let's click this and then let's select the exported application file. Click 'Upload', and then now let's click 'Next'. The export file has been imported successfully, let's click 'Next'. We want to install the application, so let's review the install settings. If you see here the export file application ID is 100 and for Install As Application in the target instance, Auto Assign New Application ID is selected. So, let's click 'Install Application'. The application is now being installed. And now you see here the Supporting Objects page where you have installed Supporting Objects switch is turned on. So, let's click 'Next', and let's confirm to install the application Supporting Objects, click 'Install'. Supporting Objects is now being installed. The application along with the supporting objects is successfully installed. Let's now click 'Run Application'.

Let's login using the workspace username and password. You can now see that the projects application is installed successfully on the target instance and you can also run through the pages. In this lesson, we learned about application migration, the steps involved in moving an application from one instance to another. We learned how to export an APEX application and we also learned how to import this exported application into the target environment. This concludes the lesson on Migrating Application Development Between Environments, wherein you're exporting and importing APEX applications. I hope you find that helpful. Thank you so much for watching.