Thursday, July 05, 2007

Installing Apex 3.0.1 on Oracle XE

Yesterday i installed Oracle Application Express 3.0.1 on top of Oracle XE.
I followed the instructions given in the How to Upgrade section of this page.

If you are getting the following error message when you run the post-installation script called apxldimg.sql:

ERROR at line 1:
ORA-22288: file or LOB operation FILEOPEN failed
the system cannot find the path specified.
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_LOB", line 523
ORA-06512: at "SYS.XMLTYPE", line 287
ORA-06512: at line 15


It means that you, like me, *interpreted* the instructions, instead of merely *executing* them... ;-)

Here is the fatal snippet from the document:

Once you complete the standard install, you need to perform the following steps to complete the upgrade:
  1. Connect to SQL*Plus as SYS
  2. @APEX_HOME/apex/apxldimg.sql APEX_HOME
  3. @APEX_HOME/apex/apxxepwd.sql password
    (where password is the password of the Application Express internal ADMIN account)
For the steps above, APEX_HOME is the directory where the Application Express software was unzipped.

I unzipped the files into a directory (or folder if you prefer...) called C:\temp with the Use Folders names option checked.
This means i ended up with an apex subdirectory below C:\temp.
Then i made this apex directory current, as per the instructions given in the main Installation Guide and then i executed the main installation script.

No problems reported.

Then, from SQL*Plus, i ran the following statement:
@apxldimg.sql C:\temp\apex
Mistake!

If you read carefully the instructions, you should notice that by APEX_HOME, the author of the document means the equivalent of the C:\temp directory, not its apex subdirectory!

So, if you go up one level from this apex directory, then you should be able to re-run those two scripts without further problems.
@apex\apxldimg.sql C:\temp

or from any directory i presume:

@C:\temp\apex\apxldimg.sql C:\temp (most similar to the original instructions)
As you see the trick is in the apparent directory change between the main installation script and the post installation scripts. However there is no need to change directory at all if you replace APEX_HOME with the full path of the directory where the files were unzipped (C:\temp).

And, by the way, it's so cool to have the real thing working on XE!

See more articles about Oracle Application Express or download tools and utilities.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a simple Thank you.

Unknown said...

Thanks. Worked for me too.

Byte64 said...

Jamie,
i hope it does, that's the whole point of this blog!

;-)

Thank you,
Flavio

Unknown said...

Simply unvaluable!!!
Tanks a lot.

Ank, Molly y Chloe said...

THANK YOU VERY MUCH! :)

Gabor Revesz said...

Finally an example, which, like a picture, is worth a 1000 words! Thanks! Simple, effective and works like a charm!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for that. I just had the same problem on a Oracle 3.2 installation.

If Oracle is reading, I would suggest you use an example of a directory path in your technical writing. At least it would allow an opportunity to notice the vital difference. This is particularly likely when 'apex' is likely to be part of our directory path, and you are using text like APEX_HOME. Such extra text could save us busy people time.

Anonymous said...

Replace APEX_HOME with DB_HOME or TEMP_HOME. It would make more sense.

Matthias said...

Hi,
I tried to install the APEX 3.2.1 patch on my XE installation on Windows XP.
The apxldimg.sql script is still not working in my case.
This is what I did:
- I downloaded the zip file to C:\Temp
- I extracted the zip file to C:\Temp. This created a directory "patch"
- I opened a command prompt window
- sqlplus /nolog
- connect sys@xe as sysdba
- SQL> @C:\Temp\patch\apxldimg.sql C:\Temp

This still gives the error:
declare
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-22288: file or LOB operation FILEOPEN failed
The system cannot find the path specified.
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_LOB", line 523
ORA-06512: at "SYS.XMLTYPE", line 287
ORA-06512: at line 17

Any idea?
Matthias

Byte64 said...

Matthias,
unfortunately i can't check myself if there are any special instructions for the patch script as i am still struggling with the crazy burocracy of Oracle Italia and their distributors, so the final result is that i can't enroll as a partner and access metalink, the only place where this patch is available.
So, my previous experience is with full upgrades, not patches which could make the difference.
Of course there could be also something wrong with your previous installation or with the parameter value, as i said, i can't verify this.

Sorry for the long but useless explanation, it's just i feel a bit frustrated, it looks like *everything*, even the most stupid thing like paying a fee, when it has to be done in this cursed country becomes harder than ROCKET SCIENCE.

end of my rant.........

:-)

Anonymous said...

Thanks. Worked for me too.

Anonymous said...

Thanks very much, you got me out of a hole...brilliant

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