Oracle APEX – Integrating 3rd party Pivot Table functionality

One of the reasons I like to develop solutions using APEX is the data-centric orientation of the applications. In that context, a serious Pivot Table functionality is a must in my toolbox. And many in the community have expressed the same as depicted and extensively discussed in idea FR-2532 – Improving Pivot Functionality. As it currently stands, the APEX team takes next position:

which in a way I can understand as it would be a lot of work and there are some good components in the market. So I decided to set up a small POC and see if I could wrap the WebDataRocks Pivot Grid component and develop the needed integration points. The result is a wrapper plugin and a sample app which you can find here in github.

The dataset can be configured via a regular Region Data Source.

Default reports (primary report/alternative reports) can be preconfigured. As a user you can save additional private reports after configuring your rows, columns, measures and report options.

The data is pre-aggregated on the server. For Drill-Through, it integrates with Interactive Report using an Inline Dialog:

Another integration point is the connection to Charts, filtering data as per the current selected cell context:

In conclusion I found the ‘3rd party option’ is certainly doable from a technical point of view – the only restriction I came across is the saving of private reports I had to restrict to local storage only as there is no infrastructure in APEX for plugin developers for remote config storage (which could be subject of another plugin, developing something on top of SODA collections).

If you are looking at integrating Pivot Table functionality, this project might be a starting point for you.

Repository: github
Demo: example page