This video shows you how to quickly query data in an always free autonomous
database using SQL Developer Web, and create an application with Application
Express.
Once you have a valid account and have used it to sign in to Oracle cloud, in
the cloud console click the corner menu icon to open the service navigation
panel. This video shows the steps for using an
always free Autonomous Transaction Processing database. The same steps
apply for always free Autonomous Data Warehouse databases. From the navigation
panel, select Autonomous Transaction Processing.
The page for Autonomous Database appears. Select an always free autonomous
database from the Details page. Click the Tools tab to directly access frequently
used database tools. SQL Developer Web is an integrated web-based environment
for developing SQL statements and PL/SQL scripts. It also provides basic
administration for your database. Oracle Application Express, or APEX, is a low
code framework for rapidly building modern data-driven web applications for
mobile and desktop users right from your browser; no additional tools required. And
ML User Administration enables setting up your Oracle Machine Learning users
for data analytics, discovery, and visualizations.
First let's take a look at SQL Developer Web. To get started, I sign into
SQL Developer Web as the default administrator account, which is a key
database user account created when provisioning the database. After signing
in, we see the SQL Developer Web Worksheet tab. Here I can create and run
SQL statements to query, add, and act on my data. This is a simple query
against the table named PRODUCTS that is part of the Sales History or SH sample
schema included in all new autonomous databases. Upon running the query, results
are shown in the Query Result panel below. On the Data Modeler tab you can
easily drag and drop tables from the navigator into a diagram and examine
table properties and key relationships. Here we see the structure and
relationships among four tables in the Sales History schema. Data Modeler gives
you an easy way to create and manage entity relationship diagrams for your
data. Now let's return to the cloud console Tools tab and jump into APEX.
On first use, you are prompted to sign in as database admin and create an initial
APEX workspace. This workspace will be your shared work area, where one or more
developers can build and run APEX applications. Enter a new database
username. This will automatically create a database schema and APEX workspace by
the same name. APEX applications will be created against database objects in this
schema. In this example, we enter APP_BUILDER for the database username, schema,
and workspace. Click Create Workspace to continue. Next, you will see the APEX
Administration console. Here, you can create and manage APEX user accounts and
more. Sign out of this and sign in to your new APEX workspace as the APP_BUILDER
user. We now see the APEX homepage. The four main areas of APEX are
App Builder, SQL Workshop, Team Development, and App Gallery. Let's first
open App Gallery to see the predefined applications that are available to us.
Here are several useful predefined applications you can install and
immediately use with your free database. There are productivity apps such as Bug
Tracking, Competitive Analysis, and Incident Tracking. And there are sample
apps such as Sample Charts and Sample Database Application, to name a few.
You can use the Create App wizard to rapidly create your own applications
from scratch. Let's create an app in less than a
minute by importing spreadsheet data from a file. In this example, we click
from a file to upload a simple CSV. We will upload data from a popular
GitHub source, the data behind The Economist's hamburger price index. This
data is used to analyze currency exchange rates worldwide. Click Choose
File to upload the spreadsheet file. Select the CSV and click Open. The data
is automatically uploaded, inspected, and staged by APEX. Here, in the Load Data
dialog, you can provide further formatting for the data, see a preview of
columns, and specify a table name. Click Load Data to continue. The table is
created with 628 rows of data. Click Continue to Create Application Wizard. On
the Create Application Wizard page, provide a name for your new application.
Accept other defaults and click Create Application to finish. In a few seconds,
you're done creating the application and ready to run it on your always free
database. Here you can see we are signing in to the live application. By default,
this application provides table column and dashboard chart views of the data in
your always free database. From here, you can easily experiment with additional
APEX functionality and refine or expand the capabilities of your application.
This has been a quick tour of always free autonomous database. There is much
more to see and do with your database. We invite you to learn more by going to
oracle.com/cloud/free