APEX reports and SQL Developer

Both Kris Rice and Dimitri Gieles blogged about new APEX reports in SQL Developer 1.1.3 . Minor detail: those reports are build for Application Express version 3.0.1 , which is not released yet.

I installed the new version of SQL Developer, and tried to run the APEX reports (location in the reports tree: All reports, Data dictionary Reports, Application Express). Surprisingly, I did not get the message Application Express 3.0.1 or higher required. In a few cases I received an error: ORA-00904 invalid identifier.

To find the SQL behind the reports a simple copy and paste of the report did not work i.e select the Application report, right click and select copy. Select the User Defined Reports, right click and paste from, nothing happened. Even export of the report(s) did not work.

After some searching I found the report SQL hidden in a file: oracle.sqldeveloper.report.jar (location sqldeveloper\extentions directory). This .jar file includes an apex30.xml, this file contains all the APEX reports in XML format (you can unzip the XML file with an unzip utility). The next step is to import the apex30.xml and then you will see all the reports in the User Defined Reports branche as well.

Changing the SQL is left as an exercise to the reader... ;-)