APEX Listener available for download

The Oracle Application Express architecture requires some form of Web server to proxy requests between a Web browser and the Oracle Application Express engine. So far you had following possibilities:

• Oracle HTTP Server/mod_plsql
• XDB HTTP protocol server/embedded PL/SQL gateway

Today Oracle made the Early Adopters of the Oracle Application Express Listener available.
It’s an alternative that is offered for the above two and with APEX 4.0 it will become the first choice.

Below you see a slide of the APEX 4.0 presentation. It explains what happens more graphically.

The main reasons why you want to consider the APEX Listener:

• it supports file system caching
• it makes the printing of pdfs easier as the APEX Listener is build in Java and integrates nicely with FOP.
• support of multiple file upload, the architecture of mod/plsql didn’t allow that
• you can add your own plugins to it
• it has a workload capture feature

As the listener is written in Java you need a J2EE runtime environment. The Oracle Application Express Listener supports Web Logic , Tomcat, and OC4J. My personal preference would be Tomcat or Web Logic, if you need more features.