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Oracle Application Express 4.2
Anthony Rayner, Product Development, Database Tools
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reserved.
The following is intended to outline Oracle’s general
product direction. It is intended for information
purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any
contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any
material, code, or functionality, and should not be
relied upon in making purchasing decisions.
The development, release, and timing of any
features or functionality described for Oracle’s
products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.
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Agenda
• Oracle Application Express Overview
• New Features in 4.2
• Beyond Oracle APEX 4.2…
• Q&A
Skip
Overview
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Oracle Application Express Overview
Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX) is a rapid web application
development tool for the Oracle database. Using only a web browser and
limited programming experience, you can develop and deploy professional
applications that are both fast and secure. Oracle APEX is a fully supported, no
cost feature of the Oracle database.
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Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX)
Browser Based Application Development
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Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX)
Benefits
Rapid Browser Based Development
Point your browser and start developing
Self Service Provisioning
Out-of-the-box elastic private cloud service
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Leverage SQL Skills
Build reports and charts using SQL
Runs within Database
Simple to manage, highly scalable
Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX)
Architectural Overview
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•
•
•
Simple 2-Tier Architecture
Pages dynamically rendered using database Meta data
No code generation or file based compilation
Runs everywhere Oracle Database runs
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Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX)
Fully supported no-cost feature of Oracle DB
• Distributed with
– Oracle Enterprise Edition
– Oracle Standard Edition
– Oracle Standard Edition One
– Oracle XE 10.2, 11.2
• Supported Database Releases
– 10gR2, 11gR1, 11gR2, 12
– Exadata, ODA, RAC
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Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX)
History
Application
Express 4.0
[2010]
HTML
DB 1.5
[2004]
HTML DB
2.0 [2005]
Application
Express 2.2
[2006]
Application
Express 3.1
[2008]
•First
Release
•SQL
Workshop
•Packaged
Applications
•Interactive
Reports
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•Websheets,
Dynamic
Actions,
Plug-Ins,
Team
Development
HTML
DB 1.6
[2004]
Application
Express 2.1
[2006]
Application
Express 3.0
[2007]
Application
Express 3.2
[2009]
Application
Express 4.1
[2011]
•Themes
•Oracle XE
•Flash
Charts, PDF
Printing,
Access
Migration
•Oracle
Forms
Conversion
•Data
Upload,
Error
Handling,
ROWID
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Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX)
Community
• Estimated 400,000 developers worldwide
• Over 120 consulting companies worldwide
• Over 75 bloggers
• 3rd most popular forum on OTN
• Web sites dedicated to plug-ins, themes, tools
• 64 sessions and > 300 APEX Developers at ODTUG KScope 12
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Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX)
Books
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Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX)
Version in Use (as of 02-NOV-2012)
40
36
35
30
25
25
20
17
15
11
10
5
5
2
0
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Usage (%)
Agenda
• Oracle Application Express Overview
• New Features in 4.2
• Beyond Oracle APEX 4.2…
• Q&A
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Mobile Application Builder
Declarative support for building mobile web applications
APEX Applications support multiple user interfaces:
e.g. Desktop and Smartphone
Mobile pages use jQuery Mobile through jQuery Mobile
based theme and templates
HTML5 based charts and new HTML5 item types
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Mobile Application Builder
User Interfaces
•
•
•
•
•
APEX applications can be associated with multiple user interfaces
Applications can include desktop and mobile specific pages
Each Page supports only one user interface
Each user interface is associated with one theme
User Interface defines device specific login URLs, home page URLs
and device auto detection
• Page 0 replaced by Global Page(s)
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Mobile Application Builder
1
Application
1
UI Types
1
n
1
1
n
User Interfaces
1
n
Themes
1
1
1
n
Pages
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n
Plug-Ins
Mobile Themes and Templates
Provide Themes & HTML Templates to support the
development of Mobile applications
• Theme 50
Declarative support to specify JavaScript & CSS
Default Mobile Page and Popup Transition Type
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Mobile Themes and Templates
Support Content Delivery Networks for jQuery files
New #PAGE_STATIC_ID# substitution string added to page
templates
Easy to Create your own Mobile themes –
Check out jQuery Mobile built-in theming framework
Themeroller for ideas:
http://jquerymobile.com/themeroller/
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List View Region Type
jQuery Mobile List view using data-role="listview" attribute
Server Side AJAX search
AJAX based pagination
Support of the "Refresh" dynamic action
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HTML5 Charts
HTML5 charts - AnyChart version 6
2 Chart Rendering options
• Flash Preferred
• HTML5
Conditional Display of Chart Series
HTML Chart region plug-in
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HTML5 Item Types
New Items Types:
• Slider
• Date Picker (HTML 5)
• Yes/No (Flip Toggle Switch)
Incorporate HTML 5 attributes:
•
•
•
•
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HTML5 placeholder attribute
HTML5 types EMAIL, TEL and URL for Textfield
HTML5 “required” attribute
Display Orientation attribute
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Mobile Calendars
Added mobile-friendly calendar templates
Added new calendar view option:
• List view
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Demo
Responsive Web Design (RWD)
an approach to web design in which a designer
intends to provide an optimal viewing
experience—easy reading and navigation with a
minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across
a wide range of devices (from desktop computer
monitors to mobile phones).
(Wikipedia)
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Themes and Templates
Responsive Design = Theme 25
Cell
Phone /
Tablet
Desktop
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Demo
Dynamic Action Enhancements
 Streamline creation (no more ‘Standard’ and ‘Advanced’)
 Enable jQuery Mobile
 Expose jQuery Mobile events through Dynamic Actions
e.g. swipe, touch, tap/hold, orientation
 Provide ‘Custom’ event support
 Declarative support for buttons to be the ‘Affected Element’
 AJAX based Dynamic Actions to work asynchronously
 Chart and List View ‘Refresh’ Dynamic Actions support
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Demo
Plug-In Enhancements
Increased Number of Custom Attributes to 25
New APIs in apex_plugin_util to better support
custom plug-in attributes of type "Region Column Name "
New Standard Region Type Plug-in Settings:
• ‘Fetched Rows’
• ‘No Data Found Message’
Add support for media queries and IE conditions to apex_css and
apex_javascript APIs
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Packaged Applications
Suite of Business Productivity applications
installable with only a few clicks
Production-ready applications include Project Management,
Shared Calendars, Checklists, etc.
Support for Third party applications, sharing same
infrastructure and user pool
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Packaged Applications
 Productivity Apps
• Project Tracker
• Checklist Manager
• Customer Tracker
• Group Calendar
• Product Features
• Bug Tracker
• Asset Manager
• Document Library
• Survey Builder
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 Sample Code
• Calendars
• Charts
• Data Loading
• Dynamic Actions
• Interactive Reports
• Master-Detail Forms
• Tabular Forms
• Trees
• Sample Database Application
• Sample Websheets
Data Upload Enhancements
Allow up to 3 columns in Look-up Definition
Expand transformation rules to include PL/SQL
Provide aliases for column names
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Demo
Other New Features in APEX 4.2
Enhanced Application Builder User Interface
Dedicated JavaScript / CSS Attributes
Grid Layout
Named Branches
Read-only attribute for Pages and Regions
Interactive Report and Websheet enhancements
Instance Administration improvements
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Other, Other New Features in APEX 4.2
Item limit per page raised to 200
Shared Session State across Applications
JavaScript library rewrite / “Legacy” JavaScript
New jQuery, AnyGantt and CKEditor charts versions
SQL Workshop Date Format
Publish Translations from command-line
Improved Accessibility
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Demo
RESTful Web Services*
Interaction with data sources through the use of
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) *
Standard method of accessing data in the Oracle Cloud
Ability to create services which implement any SQL
statement or PL/SQL procedure
Data returned in JSON or CSV format, or additionally
through PL/SQL
* Requires APEX Listener 2.0
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Instance Security: Require outbound HTTPS
Require all outbound requests to be over HTTPS.
Region of type URL, Web Services
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Instance Security: Instance-wide proxy
Require all outbound HTTP(s) traffic use an instance-wide
proxy.
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Instance Security: Restricted Characters
Input validation
Declarative control over which characters can be entered
into session state
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Instance Security: Log Switch (Data Retention)
Retention of all logs is variable
Greater log switch interval can result in less performance
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Resource Manager Consumer Group
All requests from a workspace can be confined to a resource
consumer group
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Partitioning of APEX runtime tables
Supported method to partition APEX runtime tables (session
data, activity logs and indexes)
Instance
1
Instance
2
Instance 3
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Agenda
• Oracle Application Express Overview
• New Features in 4.2
• Beyond Oracle APEX 4.2…
• Q&A
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reserved.
http://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=55447:1
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Beyond Oracle APEX 4.2…
Proposed Future Release Features
 Modal Dialogs
 Multiple Tabular Forms on one page
 Master-Detail-Detail support
 Multiple Interactive Reports on one page
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Agenda
• Oracle Application Express Overview
• New Features in 4.2
• Beyond Oracle APEX 4.2…
• Q&A
49
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reserved.
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