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| Systems Engineering and Architecture |
| IRT Information |
Rapid Application Development
Using HTMLDB to rapidly deploy web applications
The Systems Engineering and Architecture Group of IRT is pleased to support and host HTMLDB web-application development for the School of Medicine community. If you are a medical researcher affiliated with the School of Medicine with small-to-medium scale data management needs, you can either hire us to build you a data management system, or become an HTMLDB application developer yourself.
If you are interested in creating your own medical data management solution, this page will help get you started rapidly developing web applications using Oracle's HTMLDB platform.
Getting Started The first step to take is to identify yourself and your project and request a workspace by filling in a WebDB Developer Workspace Request form.
Once you have supplied the above information, an account will be created for you and you will be notified of your password via phone.
Learning the Basics You can get started learning the basics even before you have an account by browsing the official Oracle HTMLDB web site at http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/index.html. Oracle has recently rebranded HTML-DB as "Oracle Application Express". We're running version 2.0 (http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/html/2.0_archive.html), so you'll want to focus first on the 2.0 versions of their tutorials, but the older tutorials are still valid; the screenshots are slightly different, but the basic concepts are the same. You will want to download the User's Guide for future reference, and take the Quick Tour to get a sense of the platform's capabilities.
Once you have an account, you should work through at least one of these excellent tutorials:
If you only have the time or inclination to work through one tutorial, the issue tracking system is the more comprehensive of the two. It takes about six hours to complete.
After working through the tutorials, you should browse the rest of the HTMLDB documentation, paying particular attention to the How-To's section (http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/html/doc.html). There are a lot of excellent articles on this page, all dealing with advanced techniques not covered in the basic tutorials.
Some reference links:
- O'Reilly Book on PL/SQL (a good quick primer)
- Oracle Online Documentation Portal (click on Application Development tab)
- Ask Tom (not HTMLDB-specific but a goldmine nonetheless)
- HTMLDB Forum (excellent resource with regrettably poor search)
- Don't forget the HTMLDB User's Guide PDF you downloaded earlier. Now would be a good time to skim it to familiarise yourself with its content.
- Consult the IRT HTMLDB FAQ at IRT WebAuth Blog. This blog is your best resource for all School of Medicine specific questions, e.g. questions regarding the WebAuth authentication scheme. If your question is not answered here, mail it to so it and the answer can be posted to the blog.
Be sure you've checked the documentation before posting your question to a forum or mailig list, as the available documentation is quite comprehensive and generally well written. Chances are that you can answer your own question in just a few minutes by checking the appropriate documentation.
SoM Specifics All SoM HTMLDB applications that handle Protected Health Information (PHI) must have their access secured using ITSS's WebAuth. WebAuth assumes that you can separate out your security zones by subpaths in a URL; unfortunately, as you will by now have observed, the HTMLDB URL is uniform across all applications.
We have created a framework for Webauthing HTMLDB applications; this HTMLDB WebAuth Developer's Guide will walk you through the process.
When you are ready to migrate your application from the test environment to the production environment, send an email to requesting that your application be reviewed and ported to production. After your data has been migrated, you will need to consult this HTMLDB Application Migration Guide for the additional steps to take to complete the migration process.
