With the latest news on Glassfish, I thought it may be a good time to review the options for the APEX Listener to deploy. The huge caveat is this is as of today, 11/6/2013 , the future can change anything however there’s nothing planned.
The Licenses
I'm just putting the important parts here for reference. They are linked to the entire license.
The APEX Listener is only available via OTN. When that is downloaded, this is the license everyone has to agree to:
“We grant you a nonexclusive, nontransferable limited license to use the programs solely for your internal business operations subject to the terms of this agreement and the license grants and restrictions set forth with your licensing of such Oracle database programs. We also grant you a nonexclusive, nontransferable limited license to use the programs for purposes of developing your applications. This agreement does not grant any rights or licenses to Oracle database programs.”
- A restricted-use license for Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J) is included with all editions (except for Oracle Database Express Edition). This embedded version is provided solely to support Oracle Enterprise Manager (Database and Grid Control), Advanced Queuing Servlet, Ultra Search, Application Express, and Warehouse Builder, and may not be used or deployed for other purposes.
- A restricted-use license for Oracle Application Express Listener is included with all editions (except for Oracle Database Express Edition) solely to support connectivity to Oracle Application Express, which may be installed in the Oracle Database. Running Oracle Application Express Listener on a different server does not require that that server be licensed to use the Oracle Database.
Supported Application Servers
The APEX Listener’s documentation lists the supported webservers for deployment.
Oracle Application Express Listener supports the following Java EE application servers:
| Application Server | Supported Release |
| 11g Release 1 (10.3.3) or later | |
| Release 3 or later |
Clarifications on the Application Servers
I think some of the confusion is the wording of “Oracle Glassfish Server.” This was not intended to limit support to the commercial version of Glassfish. We support the APEX Listener no matter which Glassfish you are using. The support for the APEX Listener is tied directly to the database support agreement. To state the obvious, the APEX Listener team is not supporting any application server but our code base running inside that application server. If an issue is in the webserver itself arises, the customer will have to track that issue down with the webserver.
| Application Server | Supported Release |
| Oracle WebLogic Server | 11g Release 1 (10.3.3) or later |
| GlassFish Server | Release 3 or later |
| Apache Tomcat | Release 6 or later |