RE: Using Apex display files

> I have not configured Oracle REST Data Services or Tomcat. I am using the
> embedded pl/sql gateway for apex. I am not concerned about the direct
> linking as the filenames are not readable or sequential
> (01adf5ce-f17f-44b0-82fa-67edf0f318fd.tif) so guessing a file name is really
> difficult and any employee that has access will have access to everything.

From my experience, the embedded pl/sql gateway ("EPG") really slow. Even for a single user, it's much slower than REST/Tomcat. My opinion is based on APEX 4.2 in Oracle XE 11 with SHARED_SERVERS=10, so perhaps it was a configuration issue. I had sporadic pageload hangs with just me as the user. Going to the standalone APEX Listener v2 (now known as REST Data Services) resolved all performance issues, so I added it to Tomcat, as per recommended practice.

Also, since the EPG webserver is PL/SQL in the Oracle database, you would need to make sure it has access to all of the files. This might be able to be done if the documents are in the filesystem via Oracle Directories and custom PL/SQL, but the default is to store them in the DB. The initial image load sounds like it will be very time-consuming and also something that you'd have to code.

So, you could configure this in a few ways:

1. Use EPG with external files. Maybe requires custom coding to handle the different MIME types?
2. Use EPG with files in DB. Requires custom code to load/maintain files.
3. Use EPG with additional webserver to handle the static files. The additional webserver could be Apache, IIS, etc. and run on a different port, if on the same server as APEX. No custom coding (I think!).
4. Use Oracle REST Data Services with Tomcat. May require additional servelet (google it) for image serving.
5. Use Oracle REST Data Services with Tomcat and Apache webserver. Most complete/scalable, but with upfront configuration and install.

I like 5 the most, but if you want to use EPG for simplicity, maybe 3 is an option?

HTH! GL! Rich

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