So, I have installed the OS to my server, and subsequently installed the latest Oracle Express Database, and now I can start making applications using Oracle Application Express (APEX).

I can access the APEX login page by typing in the following address:

http://host.domain.com:8080/apex/

Notice the ugly :8080 after the hostname? That is because the APEX installation on Oracle XE defaults to using the Embedded PL/SQL Gateway (EPG) and EPG listens to port 8080 by default.

I want to change the URL to a ‘nicer-looking’ one. One way of doing this is to configure EPG to listen to port 80.  This is especially fine if APEX is the sole purpose of the server. However, since the server will be used for other purposes, this is undesirable because EPG cannot serve as a regular webserver, and therefore cannot replace Apache.

Another way to give APEX a nice URL is to use Apache’s reverse proxy feature.  The users will not directly access APEX via EPG but will connect to Apache, which in turn will connect to APEX.

First, set up the proxy directives in apache conf:

<IfModule mod_proxy.c>
#ProxyRequests should be turned off to disable forward proxy
ProxyRequests Off
<Proxy *>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Proxy>
</IfModule>

Then put in the actual proxy configuration for APEX:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/html"
    ServerName host.domain.com
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/html"
    ServerName apex.domain.com

    Redirect    /       http://apex.domain.com/apex/

    <Location /apex/>
        ProxyPass               http://localhost:8080/apex/
        ProxyPassReverse        http://localhost:8080/apex/
    </Location>

    <Location /i/>
        ProxyPass               http://localhost:8080/i/
        ProxyPassReverse        http://localhost:8080/i/
    </Location>
</VirtualHost>

Now the browser will show the APEX login page when you go to apex.domain.com.