Release Notes

• 

  Support for Generative AI

  With support for generative AI in APEX comes the APEX Assistant, an integrated, conversational companion that uses generative AI to help with many development activities. Use it to create apps, author SQL queries, and debug your code. Configure generative AI services across applications to build custom AI features declaratively and programmatically.

• 

  New Page Items

  The new Select One and Select Many page items let users choose one or more options from a list of values, with more flexible styling and searching than browser native select lists.

• 

  Template Component Enhancements

  Template Components now render faster, support selection and slots for easy component composition, and can be used without a data source.

• 

  Workflow and Approvals Enhancements

  Enhancements to the Workflow component include the new Workflow Diagram region, a new Workflow Dashboard page, enhanced APIs to retrieve purgeable task and workflow instances, workflow instance IDs for easier debugging, and more. The Approvals component has been improved to allow task initiators to approve and reject tasks, and add vacation rules for tasks.

• 

  Support for Hierarchical REST Source Data Profiles

  APEX Components can now consume data from REST Sources on every hierarchy level.

• 

  Component Groups

  A new shared component type, Component Group, allows you to create collections of other shared components and easily copy, subscribe, or refresh those components. The subscription functionality has also been extended to support even more capability for the following shared components: Lists, Data Load Definitions, REST Data Sources, Authentication Schemes, Authorization Schemes, List of Values, Plug-ins, Shortcuts, and Search Configurations.

• 

  Improvements to Working Copies

  The Application Working Copies feature set has been enhanced to provide a more efficient development experience when changes exist to pages across copies. New options in Page Designer allow developers to find and compare changes between a single page in other Working Copies and Main.

• 

  Integration with Document Generator

  Leverage the OCI Document Generator function with a new remote print server type to generate PDF documents from Microsoft Word templates. Easily print report layouts using a new page process or the new APEX_PRINT API.

• 

  Builder Extensions Enhancements

  A workspace can now be configured to host APEX Builder extensions that other workspaces on the same instance can invoke. Create and publish extension apps that can be opened from the current Builder session and access your workspace's application metadata.

• 

  Universal Theme

  Font APEX 2.3 brings new icons to Universal Theme, a new template option to hide empty results for Value-Pair and Contextual Info templates, and minor UI enhancements have been made to components in Redwood Light.

• 

  Accessibility Improvements

  Read-only items have been updated to support accessible rendering, and accessibility-specific help text has been added to relevant attributes in Page Designer. Additionally, numerous accessibility-centered bug fixes have been made.

• 

  Automatic Dismissal of Success Messages

  Dismiss application success messages with a new application-level setting, and use the new API to control dismiss preferences and timing.

• 

  Builder Improvements

  Numerous Builder improvements have been made to enhance the developer experience, including updating Spotlight Search to display results in categories and highlight the search time, make exporting and importing components between applications easier, allow pages to be exported in readable YAML format, and minor enhancements to Page Designer and REST Data Source.

Other Features

• Region plug-ins now support an unlimited number of plug-in attributes.
• Filter results in Faceted Search and Smart Filters regions using the Date Picker that is now supported in Input facets and Manual Range inputs, and set format masks to customize date representation.
• Easily trigger the download of BLOB and CLOB files with the new Download Dynamic Action and Process Type. Download a single file or multiple files as a zip, and choose between showing a file as a downloaded attachment or inline in the browser.
• Trigger actions every time the value of an element changes with the new Input Dynamic Action Event. Plus, the JavaScript Code and Execute Server-side Code actions have been added to the Quick Pick options for Dynamic Action action types to easily access these commonly used options.
• The new Show Processing attribute now available for page buttons can be used to prevent multiple page submissions.
• Language support for runtime messages in APEX has been extended to include Ukrainian and Vietnamese.
• Enable advanced, full text search features, including fuzzy and proximity search, with new Oracle Text Query functions, Search Engine and Expert Search, both available as part of the APEX_SEARCH API.
• Basic Authentication or OAuth2 Client Web Credentials can reference a Database Credential storing the Client ID and Client Secret. Only available on Oracle Database 23ai or Autonomous Database release 19c or later.
• Define custom separators for multi-value-based items and avoid individual item implementations with new custom separator support for the Combobox, List Manager, Popup LOV, Select List, Select Many, and Shuttle types.
• Support for the "AssertionConsumerServiceIndex" attribute in SAML authentications allows APEX Instance Administrators to configure SAML callbacks for multiple domains in the Instance Administration settings.
• Instance Administrators can control the number of mail requests made by a single tenant by defining a maximum number of emails to be processed during each invocation of the ORACLE_APEX_MAIL_QUEUE scheduler job.
• The Alternative Label attribute is now available for Interactive Report columns, allowing developers to customize column headings with markup for use in dialogs and additional various column heading placements.
• The new process type available in APEX ADB instances, Server Side Geocoding, allows users to turn postal addresses into coordinates independently from the UI.
• APEX developers can use the new APEX_APP_OBJECT_DEPENDENCY API to analyze their applications and report all references to database objects by page and application.
• The addition of new PL/SQL APIs bring new functionality to developers. A new TERMINATE function within the APEX_AUTOMATION API allows developers to terminate a currently executing automation. Describe columns and data types of a data source using the new DESCRIBE_QUERY function in APEX_EXEC. And the APEX_INSTANCE_ADMIN API has been updated to provide new levels of control over creating and unlocking accounts and instances and granting APEX privileges.
• We've updated several JavaScript libraries to newer releases, including Oracle JET 16.0.1, FullCalendar 6.1.11, Monaco Editor 0.47.0, MarkedJS 12.0.1, Less.js 4.2.0, DOMPurify 3.0.11, Terser 5.30.3, TinyMCE 6.8.3, PrismJS 1.29.0, CSSO 5.0.5, Cropper.js 1.6.1, Turndown 7.1.2, Font APEX 2.3, Oracle Rich Text Library. Additionally, Mapbox has been upgraded to MapLibre 4.0.1.

• 

  Application Working Copies

  Create a working copy of an app to fix a bug or add a feature, then selectively merge your changes back into the main application. You can create as many working copies as you like, so multiple developers can contribute and merge changes to a single application.

• 

  Workflows

  A fully integrated workflow solution that enables you to automate business processes the low-code way, using an intuitive, visual workflow designer built natively into the platform.

• 

  New Page Items

  Create apps with more capabilities using the new Combobox, Image Upload, and QR Code Generator items.

• 

  Custom Map Backgrounds

  Maps now support custom background tiles enabling you to visualize your spatial data in more ways than ever before. These map backgrounds are defined in Shared Components and can be used across all map components.

• 

  Faceted Search Enhancements

  Added support for arbitrary facets and sort direction provides both developers and users even more control over the filtering and sorting of report data with Faceted Search.

• 

  Template Component Updates

  Template Components render faster and support any number of attributes, enabling developers to build even more sophisticated UI components. We've also expanded the versatility of the built-in Template Components that are part of Universal Theme, enabling you to get more out-of-the-box.

• 

  Improved Shared Components Subscriptions

  Improvements to subscriptions within Shared Components make it easier to manage component consistency across applications.

• 

  Quick SQL Updates

  Create, maintain, and review application data models with minimal typing, lighting-fast SQL generation, and a built-in entity relationship diagram.

• 

  REST Data Source Enhancements

  Numerous enhancements to the REST infrastructure within APEX bring about deeper integrations with external applications and expand the reach of your APEX-based solutions.

• 

  Fusion App Extensions

  Create REST data sources to query, insert, update, and delete data from Fusion Apps REST APIs. Once your REST Data Sources are defined, you can use any APEX regions connected to the Fusion Apps REST APIs and build custom experiences using the power of SQL.

• 

  Workflow and Approvals Enhancements

  Handle new human task use cases with expanded functionality.

Other Features

• Define human tasks that require a participant's input or acknowledgement without an explicit approval outcome using Action Tasks.
• The first page of the Create Application process has refreshed look to make creating a new application easier than ever. Create a new application in just a few clicks without having to go through the entire Create Application wizard.
• The import and export wizards have been simplified to create a more intuitive, enhanced user experience. Export apps, pages, or components using the new, standardized navigation system for different types of exports, then import them into your workspaces and applications in just a few steps.
• Customize your workspaces to add links and menu entries to the Builder UI using Builder Extension Links. Once a Link has been configured for a workspace, the associated Extension Menu will appear between the workspace Search and Administration menu.
• New Comment and Uncomment options in the Rendering Tree Context Menu in Page Designer allows toggling any component's Build Option attribute directly from the Context Menu in Page Designer.
• Enhancements to the Application Gallery allow you to install an app without using the Install dialog or install multiple apps in sequence. A new update option allows you to get the most recent version of a previously installed app without needing to remove it.
• General accessibility enhancements to the development environment and numerous accessibility-focused bug fixes have been made to create a better user experience for all users.
• The Close Dialog process has a new attribute called Show Success Messages. When switched on, success messages are shown in the top level frame of the page.
• A new Application File Storage option in Application Definition makes Object Storage available as the location for storing application static resources such as images, CSS, and JavaScript.
• When choosing a custom target for an interactive report attributes, the link icon will default to fa-edit if the application contains Font APEX. fa-edit was also added to the quick pick list.
• A new search type in the APEX Search Configuration wizard provides support for the new Oracle Database 23c feature, Ubiquitous Database Search.
• Associate a context value with a background execution chain and optionally serialize execution based on it.
• New parameters in the APEX_INSTANCE_ADMIN API makes it possible to disable and restrict apps in your APEX workspace. Disable some or all apps with the DISABLE_APPS_LOGIN parameter, or restrict access to back-office apps with the RESTRICT_APPS_HEADER parameter, which identifies the HTTP request header and determines which apps are permitted for public use.
• The EMP and DEPT dataset has been added for both the Arabic and Italian languages, accompanied by a blueprint for easily building sample applications on the underlying dataset.
• Child Items of a Static List Item can now be populated by a reference a List, with the ability to nest lists up to 10 levels. The referenced List can be static or Dynamic, and identifying List and Sublist relations can easily be done in the List Utilization report.
• Template Directives are now available for use inside the Text, Textarea, and HTML Template Component attributes in Page Designer, as well as in assignments of a {with/} and {apply/} block.
• Background page processing just got better with improved serialization, better integration with APEX error handling, and allowing transactional and non-transactional submissions.
• Tweaks to colors, backgrounds, textures, padding, and additional styling give the Redwood Light theme a refreshed look and feel.
• We've updated several JavaScript libraries to newer releases including Oracle JET 15.0.0, jQuery 3.6.4, jQuery Migrate 3.4.1, FullCalendar 6.1.8, MarkedJS 5.1.2, DOMPurify 3.0.5, Terser 5.19.2, and TinyMCE 6.6.1.

• 

  Template Components

  Template Components is a new plug-in type for building re-usable UI components with support for actions, menus, and custom attributes. These components can be rendered as standalone regions, and can also be used within reports as partials for a column.

• 

  PWA Push Notifications

  Low code push notifications, made available with a single switch. Easily notify desktop and mobile users who've opted-in to receive push notifications.

• 

  Modernized Object Browser

  The Object Browser delivers a more accessible and streamlined user experience that makes managing database objects easier than ever before.

• 

  Page Processing Improvements

  Group a sequence of page processes to offload processing to the background or just simplify maintainability of conditional execution.

• 

  REST Data Source Enhancements

  REST Data Sources have been updated to provide more control over source discovery and responses.

• 

  Improvements to APEX Administration

  The APEX Administration experience has been improved to include the new Admin Digest, allow auto provisioning restrictions, and provide a new APEX_APPLICATION_ADMIN API.

• 

  Approvals Component Enhancements

  The Approvals component has been enhanced to provide support for due dates when creating approval tasks.

Other Features

• Create copies of pages from the current application or other apps directly from the Create Page wizard with the new Create Page as a Copy button.
• Run pages in Page Designer directly from code editor dialogs without closing using the new Save and Run functionality in code editors.
• Links to documentation resources in APEX Builder applications have been updated to include context to allow the documentation to redirect to appropriate book or chapter.
• The APEX Builder has been updated to use friendly URLs, paving the way for future enabling of PWA in Builder.
• Plug-ins have been extended to support up to 25 attributes, as well as make it possible to assign Groups for custom attributes.
• Native support for Property Graphs has been added in database 23c.
• Open SQL Developer Web directly from the SQL Workshop menu. Supported on ORDS version 23.1 and must be configured at the instance level.
• You can now configure external web services by passing the Execution Context ID for end-to-end tracing.
• New app security attribute, Session State Commit, provides control over how changes to session and item values as well as accompanying commits are handled.
• Application icons generated for PWAs have been updated to apply the appropriate masking so it looks appropriate on more platforms and devices.
• Region Display Selectors now support displaying icons in tabs and have new options for remembering active tabs.
• Universal Theme has been updated to include out-of-the-box Template Components, a new Up position for Title Bar and Hero regions, improved rendering for Collapsible and Region Display Selector regions, and more.
• Downloading and uploading themes can now be done directly from the Theme Roller interface.
• The old JET Color Picker has been replaced with a new web component based color picker.
• REST-enabling functionality for database objects has been removed from the APEX Object Browser and placed under APEX RESTful Services.
• Plain text attributes have been updated to properly escape HTML and ARIA attributes and prevent HTML markup from being exposed to screen readers.
• The TinyMCE JavaScript Library has been added and is now the base for the Rich Text Editor as CKEditor has been deprecated.
• We've updated several JavaScript libraries to newer releases including Oracle JET 14.0.0, FullCalendar 5.11.3, PrismJS 1.29.0, MarkedJS 4.2.5, DOMPurify 2.4.3, CKEditor5 36.0.0, Terser 5.16.1, CSSO 5.0.5, Cropper.js 1.5.13, and MapLibre 2.4.0.

• 

  Application Search

  The all-new Search Region and Search Configurations shared component makes it easy to add rich search capabilities to your APEX applications. Within moments, you can provide your users with powerful search-engine style functionality that looks for matches across multiple data sources, and displays relevant matches in a single unified search results region.

• 

  Invoke API process type

  This new page-level process type allows the execution of procedures and functions completely declaratively, without having to write PL/SQL code.

• 

  Approvals Component Enhancements

  The Approvals component has been enhanced to include additional capabilities. Configure due dates, expiration policies, action logging, and more.

• 

  Date Picker

  The new Date Picker has been built from the ground up for APEX and provides a streamlined user experience that is faster, more accessible, and lighter weight.

• 

  PWA and Mobile Updates

  The Approvals component has been enhanced to include additional capabilities, such as, feature detection, app screenshots, app shortcuts, device geolocation, web share, and declarative meta tags.

• 

  Landmark Support for Regions

  Landmarks play a critical role in allowing screen reader users to understand the structure of a web page, and how to quickly navigate across it. With Oracle APEX 22.2, developers can now redefine Landmarks for any given region, enabling developers with greater control and flexibility on how the page structure is communicated to screen readers.

Other Features

• You can name actions, debounce and throttle Dynamic Actions.
• The APEX_LDAP API supports a new p_credential_static_id parameter to avoid hardcoding credentials in PL/SQL packages or storing credentials in other insecure ways.
• The APEX_ESCAPE API now includes new functions to fully support CLOB and the csv and striphtml functions to escape special characters and HTML.
• You can store values larger than 32K characters in page items and Interactive Grid columns.
• The Autocomplete item has been reimagined as a native APEX web-component and provides a more streamlined user experience, support for icons, cascading list of values, and more.
• The Map region can now use Vector Layers for improved display quality, especially on high pixel density displays.
• Support easier number entry on smartphones and tablets with the new Virtual Keyboard attributes.
• We've updated the migration logic for old calendar regions which still used FullCalendar v3 as part of instance upgrades and application imports.
• The Rich Text editor has been updated with new attributes for Toolbar Style to control toolbar item overflow, and Allow Custom HTML which provides support for custom HTML with inline editing.
• You can now use Template Directives in HTML Expressions of Classic and Interactive Report columns, enabling you to remove conditional output logic from your SQL queries.
• There are several updates and enhancements to Data Generator including the ability to set Column and Table sequences, rename Blueprints, usability improvements to Custom Data Sources and Formulas, improved help text, and more!
• You can now use the application alias to find APEX apps, perform an in-app scoped search using "alias:page", and search using regular expressions by starting the search string with "regexp:" followed by an expression.
• We've updated several JavaScript libraries to newer releases including Oracle JET 12.1.3, jQuery UI 1.13.2, jQuery Migrate 3.4.0, FullCalendar 5.11.2, PrismJS 1.28.0, MarkedJS 4.0.17, DOMPurify 2.3.8, and CKEditor5 35.0.1.

• 

  Approvals and Unified Task List

  With the new approvals components, you can deliver solutions requiring human approvals in record time. Define tasks in any application that users initiate from any page and approvers process using a single Unified Task List.

• 

  Simplified Page Creation

  The Create Page wizard has been drastically simplified to make it easier than ever before to create pages in your APEX apps. We've streamlined the wizard by applying smart defaults, minimizing user input, improving page navigation, and more.

• 

  Readable Application Export in JSON or YAML Formats

  Your application exports can now include a readable and easily "diffable" version in YAML/JSON format.

• 

  Row Search. Improved.

  The Row Search functionality within APEX has been enhanced to provide a more natural and intuitive search experience throughout your application. With the new tokenized search behavior enabled, users will be able to enter multiple words and find the more relevant content, even if those words span more than one columns.

• 

  Region Sorting Made Easy

  The new Order By Page Item feature enables developers to easily configure sorting options for your regions. Supported regions will allow you to set an item to configure the sort order, automatically pick up on the change event, apply the appropriate order by clause, and refresh the region.

• 

  Faceted Search Enhancements

  Faceted search has been update to support search term highlighting for client-side filtering, a new actions menu per-facet with additional facet-level controls, and several accessibility and user experience improvements.

• 

  Markdown and Rich Text Editor

  A number of enhancements have been done around the creation and display of Rich Text, be it HTML or Markdown.

• 

  PWA Service Worker Customization

  APEX developers can now tap into the PWA engine and inject their own service worker code to handle anything from push notifications, web app payments, background app updates and more.

• 

  Persistent Authentication

  Allow your customers to get back into action faster with the new persistent authentication. Sign in once, stay signed in.

• 

  Universal Theme Updates

  Universal Theme has been updated with an all new Image region template, support for Region Images, improved page rendering performance, and more.

• 

  Data Generator

  Looking for sample data to populate in your tables? With the all-new Data Generator in APEX, you can easily define data generation blueprints and fill your tables with randomly generated sample data. Once you have your blueprint defined, you can choose to generate sample data exports as CSV or JSON files, or insert the data directly into your existing tables.

• 

  Application Icons

  Give your application the branding it deserves with our new application icon editor. Upload your application icon once and let APEX propagate it to your application at runtime.

• 

  Effortless App Gallery Installs

  Now you can install starter apps and sample apps without leaving APEX. Within seconds, you can select the app you want and install it from the updated App Gallery.

• 

  REST Sources Support for REST Enabled SQL Query

  Now you can create REST Sources on top of REST Enabled SQL to be executed on a remote database, and abstract the SQL query from APEX components.

• 

  Session Overrides

  Session Overrides are a convenient way for developers to quickly change values in the session that the APEX engine is typically responsible for, like File Paths, Additional Files and Globalization Attributes.

• 

  File URLs Enhancements

  The JavaScript and CSS File URLs syntax has been enhanced with new features.

Other Features

• Now you can also include your Workspace Static Files using Component Export.
• You can now subscribe to lists from one application to another, enabling you have a single list definition that is shared across multiple applications. We've also simplified the Create and Copy List wizards, and the Edit List page.
• The APEX_WEB_SERVICE API now includes the CLEAR_REQUEST_HEADERS and CLEAR_REQUEST_COOKIES procedures, providing an easy programmatic way to clear request headers and cookies.
• Downloading data from APEX reporting components is now faster than ever before.
• The code editor in APEX has been updated with numerous improvements, including an option for enabling Bracket Pair Colorization, ability to highlight uncommon invisible characters, and intellisense support for JavaScript code defined in JavaScript Function and Global Variable Declaration.
• The Shared Components page now displays badges with component counts, a more prominent link for Progressive Web App settings under User Interface, and other small changes to improve usability.
• We've updated several JavaScript libraries to newer releases including Oracle JET 12, jQuery UI 1.13.1, FullCalendar 5.5.1, PrismJS 1.26.0, MarkedJS 4.0.12, DOMPurify 2.3.1, CKEditor4 4.18.0, CKEditor5 32.0.0, and MapLibre 1.15.2 (Maps previously used Mapbox)

• 

  Smart Filters

  Smart Filters is a new search component that allows users to quickly narrow data down with filters suggestions or search terms. Developers can use this component to provide users with a simplified search experience that eliminates clutter and provides a single control to instantly find the information they are looking for.

• 

  Progressive Web Apps

  Your APEX apps can easily be defined as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to take advantage of advanced caching and improved performance. These apps can also be installed on your smartphone of choice with device-specific installation instructions.

• 

  Universal Theme & UI Updates

  Take greater control over your application's user interface with additional component positions across page templates, modal dialog drawers, improved accessibility, smoother page loading, and much more!

• 

  Faceted Search Enhancements

  Faceted search now has declarative support for multi-value columns, has improved accessibility, and gives you more control over how a facet is displayed.

• 

  Updated Alert and Confirm Dialogs

  The Alert and Confirm dialogs now have an updated appearance and provide customization options for easily specifying the style, title, icon, and even custom button labels.

• 

  Geocoding and Map Items

  Geocoding your addresses has never been easier, and you can even display a map as a page item! The best part is that you don't need an API key!

• 

  REST Catalogs and Improvements

  Users can now search and browse through a catalog that contains metadata about REST Services and create APEX REST Data Sources based on REST Service metadata within the catalog. In addition, there is built-in pagination support for Simple HTTP REST Data Sources.

• 

  Improved Report Downloads, Subscriptions, and Printing

  Image columns are now supported for downloaded reports where they will be embedded in the PDF, XLSX, or HTML export file.

• 

  Improved Editor

  Allows developers to create, edit and rename static application, workspace, plug-in, and theme files without the need to re-upload the file each time. The feature also includes automatic minification of JavaScript and CSS files, and compilation of LESS files.

• 

  Environment Setup

  Easily tell apart different APEX environments by configuring an Environment Banner at the instance or workspace level.

• 

  Email and Email Template Enhancements

  The Send Email page process now supports Email Templates with declarative substitutions.

Other Features

• Data Packager makes it easy to migrate applications from one instance to another, including data in tables.
• Set value (Dynamic Action or apex.item.setValue) will now automatically populate the display value, and additional outputs (if defined).
• Date Picker now has a 'Show On' attribute, to control when the calendar popup display.
• New "Dialog Closed or Canceled" event will fire if a user presses the Escape key or the X button in the dialog.
• Now you can define a copyright banner for your application exports.
• There's now apex_debug.get_page_view_id and apex_debug.get_last_message_id to link messages written by LOGGER to an APEX debug session and show LOGGER messages in the right order.
• There are new APIs for mapRegion, facetsRegion, apex.date, apex.items, apex.regions and apex.env.
• You can now build APEX Apps in 21 additional languages.
• We've updated several JavaScript libraries to newer releases including Oracle JET 11, jQuery 3.6.0, PrismJS 1.24.1, MarkedJS 3.0.0 and more.

• 

  Maps Region

  Displaying spatial data within your APEX apps has never been easier. The all-new native Map component allows you to add powerful, feature rich, and interactive maps to your APEX apps within minutes. They are powered by Oracle eLocation Service so it is ready to use, no API Key required!

• 

  New Application Data Loading

  You can easily add data import capabilities to allow users to upload CSV, XLSX, XML and JSON data formats to your applications with the new Data Loading process.

• 

  Faceted Search Enhancements

  Faceted search now supports Maps and Calendar region types, and provides additional end-user flexibility for showing or hiding facets, enabling you to easily hide advanced or rarely used facets that can be made available on demand.

• 

  UI and Theme Roller Updates

  Universal Theme and Theme Roller have been enhanced to provide even greater control over your application's user interface, with updates to the Redwood Light theme style, new class attributes, and accessibility improvements.

• 

  REST Data Sources Updated

  You can now define REST Data Sources based on CSV data, enabling you to treat any CSV file on the web as if it were a table. In addition, REST Data Sources now support a number of built-in data conversions, including converting to upper or lower case, trimming whitespace, or fetching a lookup value from another table.

• 

  Native Markdown Support

  Markdown support has been vastly improved in this release, including a new PL/SQL Markdown parser, and enhancements to display markdown formatted content in items and columns.

• 

  New Date Picker Item Type

  The Date Picker item has been completely revamped and supports additional display modes, time selection, dynamic minimum and maximum date ranges, and several user experience and accessibility improvements.

• 

  Developer Experience

  There are numerous improvements to the code editor within the App Builder to provide a better experience to developers. Users can also import zip files of application exports using the APEXExport utility, find application and page checksums for easy comparisons across different environments, and SQL Workshop now includes a new Create Spatial Index wizard.

• 

  Security Improvements

  We have added various security improvements such as an attribute for Application items that allow users to escape characters, a default Referrer-Policy HTTP header, and an increase to the maximum session idle timeout.

• 

  Reporting Improvements

  This release also features improvements to Classic and Interactive reports, including support for Lazy Loading, complex text layout languages when exporting to PDF, and variable height rows in Interactive Grids.

Other Features

• You can now define Client-Side Conditions, Server-Side Conditions, Authorizations, and Build Options for Actions of Dynamic Actions.
• The Number Field page item type now does automatic formatting according to its format mask and client side validation.
• The Color Picker page item type has been updated including new functionality for different display modes, color presets, contrast checking, and multiple value return formats.
• The client-side validation messaging is more consistent with server validation messaging, and no longer displays the error pop-up.
• There's now GeoJSON and SDO_GEOMETRY support in the APEX_JSON and APEX_EXEC packages.

• 

  Cards Region

  The new Cards Region is a lightweight report region, declaratively supporting customizations of layout, appearance, icon, badge, media and actions. Use cards to embed and share media sourced from BLOB column, URL or video in iFrame. Cards are useful for presenting a variety of information in small blocks. As Cards usually provide entry to more detailed information, you can include a number of actions as button or links declaratively.

• 

  Automations

  Automations are a sequential set of PL/SQL actions, triggered by query results. They are used to monitor data and then perform the appropriate action (examples are auto-approving specific requests and sending email alerts). An automation can be triggered on Schedule or on Demand, by invoking the APEX_AUTOMATION package. Query results can be derived from: Table or View, SQL Query or a PL/SQL function returning a SQL Query. Local Database or REST Enabled SQL. REST Data Source (aka Web Source Modules).

• 

  Faceted Search Enhancements

  Faceted Search has been enhanced to generating bar or pie charts of facet value counts, grouping checkbox facets for Boolean columns, supporting comparing user-entered value with the facet column in Input Field facet type and performance optimization for distinct value facets.

• 

  Report Printing

  Built-in PDF printing is supported in Interactive Reports, Interactive Grids and Classic Reports and in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. You can attach any download formats in Interactive Report - Send Email. Enhanced integration with BI publisher. Use new APEX_REGION.EXPORT_DATA and APEX_DATA_EXPORT APIs to programmatically generate PDF, CSV, Excel, HTML, JSON and XML files.

• 

  REST Data Source Synchronization

  APEX supports data synchronization from a REST Data Source (formerly known as Web Source Modules) to a local table. Synchronization can run either on Schedule or on Demand, by calling the APEX_REST_SOURCE_SYNC package. Developers don't need to build custom PL/SQL code in order to copy data from REST services to local tables; APEX provides this as a declarative option.

• 

  REST Data Source Connector Plug-Ins

  The APEX Plug-In infrastructure has been extended to support Connector Plug-Ins for external REST APIs. This enables APEX to fully leverage REST API features like result pagination or server-side filtering, also for 3rd Party REST Services which are not ORDS or Oracle Fusion SaaS Services.

• 

  New Web Credential Types

  APEX 20.2 introduces new URL Query String and HTTP Header types for Web Credentials. This allows developers to use the secure and encrypted credential storage also for REST Services which expect e.g. an API key as part of the URL. APEX makes sure that such sensitive parts are not written to debug or execution logs. A web credential can now be protected by providing a URL pattern. APEX will only use the Web Credential for URLs starting with the given pattern; otherwise an error message will be raised. To change the URL pattern, the secret part of the Web Credential needs to be entered again.

• 

  Redwood UI

  Universal Theme now supports a new Redwood Light theme style, available via Theme Roller. Refresh your existing apps to uptake the latest version of Universal Theme and this new theme style.

• 

  Developer Experience

  Improved developer experience by introducing multiple tabs in the Property Editor pane in page designer, a new code editor, an embedded code utility and saving a model in Quick SQL.

• 

  New and Improved Items

  New checkbox item type. The file browse, rich text editor, text field textarea item types have been improved.

Other Features

• Tree region type has been enhanced to support lazy loading and refresh without having to reload the full page.
• New Interactive Grid Saved Report Static ID Support.
• Web Source Modules are now named REST Data Sources.

• 

  APEX + Redwood

  The user interface of APEX and the App Builder has been refreshed to align with Redwood, Oracle's new user experience design system. The new design and color scheme extends across the full developer experience and provides refreshing new visuals. The appearance of APEX can now automatically switch between the dark and light appearance modes based on your OS or platform setting, enabling APEX to seamlessly integrate with your workflow.

• 

  Faceted Search Enhancements

  Faceted Search has been enhanced to allow for cascading list of values, conditional facets and compact count display, among other enhancements.

• 

  Friendly URLs

  The URL syntax for APEX apps has been simplified to allow for friendlier URLs at runtime. The new syntax provides a Search Engine Optimization (SEO)-friendly URL structure which is far easier to understand and provides immediate context as to where you are within an app. The URL no longer features application or page numbers, and instead, uses the workspace path prefix, application and page aliases, and standard web parameter syntax for its URL structure.

• 

  Improvements in Deployments and Exports

  There have been numerous improvements in application lifecycle management including one-click app deployments, automated backups, zip exports, and more. These features make it easy to deploy APEX apps and integrate it into your existing workflow.

• 

  Native PDF Printing

  You can now print PDF files directly from Interactive Grids. This feature produces a PDF file which includes formatting options such as highlighting, column grouping, and column breaks.

• 

  Mega Menus

  Universal Theme now includes Mega Menus for your application's navigation. Mega Menus render the navigation menu as a collapsible floating panel that displays all navigation items at once. It is especially useful for displaying the various aspects of your application and enables direct access to sections of your app.

Other Features

• Users will now be alerted shortly before their APEX session is about to expire and will have the opportunity to extend it.
• SQL Workshop has now been extended to support Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) Collections.
• There have been a number of improvements and bug fixes within Universal Theme for right-to-left languages.
• Filtering of data in an Interactive Grid is now supported through URL parameters as well as the new APEX_IG API.
• The version of the Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit (JET) library has been upgraded to version 8.0.

• 

  Faceted Search

  Introducing Faceted Search, a new component that enables you to quickly search and filter your data like never before. Empower your users to see data in new ways, and discover new insights, effortlessly, with just a few clicks.

• 

  All New Team Development

  Team Development has been completely reimagined to provide a simple and easy way for your team to collaborate together. Whether it's an enhancement request, a new feature, or a bug – everything is now tracked as an Issue that can easily be assigned, labeled, and managed. You can even receive notifications and see a full timeline of everything that's happening from a single page.

• 

  New and Improved Item Types

  From a completely reimagined Popup LOV component to an all new UI for the Switch item, get more out-of-the-box with these new and improved item types in this release.

• 

  Expanded Shared LOVs

  There are numerous enhancements to Shared List of Values (LOV) including support for additional data sources, declarative column mappings, and multiple display column.

• 

  Builder Improvements

  There have been numerous changes and user experience enhancements to the Oracle APEX App Builder to make it even more productive.

• 

  Universal Theme

  Universal Theme has been refreshed with UI refinements, accessibility improvements, new template options, and deeper control via Theme Roller to help your applications look better than ever.

Other Features

• Developer Toolbar allows setting the Default Debug Level and remembers the debug level when run again from the App Builder.
• Interactive Report, Interactive Grid, and Popup LOV searches can be passed to a REST service. Enable the Use for Row Search switch for a Web Source Module parameter in order to use this feature.
• The data upload functionality in SQL Workshop has been extended to allow uploading native Excel, CSV, XML, and JSON documents into existing tables.
• SQL Workshop Data Loading and the APEX_DATA_PARSER package support up to 20 CLOB columns.
• If an Oracle Text Index Column is chosen, Interactive Report and Popup LOV row searches will benefit from advanced searching capabilities such as fuzzy or linguistic search. Note: For Popup LOV, the Oracle Text Index Column is chosen in the Shared LOV definition.
• Several libraries have been updated to newer releases including Oracle JET, jQuery, FullCalendar, CKEditor, CodeMirror and more!

• 

  Dark Mode

  The development environment of APEX can now be rendered with a darker color scheme, which reduces eye strain and is especially helpful for those who are developing late into the night.

• 

  Create App from File

  The data upload functionality in SQL Workshop and Create Application From a File have been modernized with a new drag & drop user interface and support for native Excel, CSV, XML and JSON documents. A new public data loading PL/SQL API is also available.

• 

  REST Enabled Forms

  The built-in support for REST Enabled SQL and Web Sources has been extended to Form regions, allowing read and write access to remote data sources.

• 

  Form Region Type

  The new Form region type significantly improves and streamlines how data is retrieved and processed for page items.

Other Features

• New Status Meter Gauge Chart
• Declarative font formatting for charts
• You can now define group and category labels for stacked charts.
• Gantt charts now include declarative tooltip support.
• Accessibility improvements in Universal Theme including new "Skip to Main Content" link.
• There are now two additional styles for the tree-based Navigation Menu for Universal Theme
• There is a new Inline Popup region template for Universal Theme
• Improved responsive behavior for breadcrumbs and several other UI components in Universal Theme
• A number of new declarative attributes have been added to Interactive Grids such as Select First Row and new Toolbar Controls.
• New dynamic actions for opening and closing regions have been added.
• Authentication to the App Builder can now be configured to use Social Login.
• New Additions to JavaScript API Doc
• Save Session State just in memory
• APEX Upgrade will automatically copy ACLs
• Improved translation editing
• APEX_STRING enhancements
• APEX_SESSION additions
• Removal of jQuery Mobile
• Removal of APEXExportSplitter

• 

  Streamlined Workspace Requests

  There are additional options to simplify and reduce the number of steps for new workspace requests.

• 

  New Page Types in Create Page Wizard

  You can now create side-by-side master detail and dashboard pages from the Create Page wizard.

• 

  Create Apps from Sample Datasets

  Installing a sample dataset will allow you to jump into the Create App wizard with predefined pages.

• 

  New Static List of Values Editor

  You can now easily define static list of values in Page Designer

Other Features

• Improved warnings within REST Workshop to prevent loss of custom definitions.
• More comprehensive JavaScript API documentation.
• Ability to update Font APEX stylesheets and font files independent of Oracle APEX releases.
• Font APEX has been updated to version 2.1 and includes a number of bug fixes.
• EMP / DEPT Sample Dataset is now localized in 10 languages.
• Numerous improvements to handling of touch events.
• General improvements and bug fixes to Universal Theme.
• Added "Getting Started" links to primary pages across the builder.

• 

  Application Features

  Easily add higher-level application features to your app, including access control, feedback, activity reporting, email reporting, dynamic user interface selection, and more.

• 

  REST Enabled SQL Support

  You can now build charts, reports, calendars, trees and even invoke processes against Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS)-provided REST Enabled SQL Services.

• 

  Web Source Modules

  Declaratively access data services from a variety of REST endpoints, including ordinary REST data feeds, REST Services from Oracle REST Data Services, and Oracle Cloud Applications REST Services.

• 

  REST Workshop

  A completely rearchitected REST Workshop, to assist in the creation of REST Services against your Oracle database objects.

• 

  Social Authentication

  Developers can now easily create APEX applications which can use Oracle Identity Cloud Service, Google, Facebook, generic OpenID Connect and generic OAuth2 as the authentication method.

• 

  Universal Theme + Mobile UI

  There are a number of features in Universal Theme to enable developers to build common mobile UI patterns. There are also new components based on jQuery Mobile widgets to assist in the creation of mobile applications.

Other Features

• Wizards have been streamlined with smarter defaults and fewer steps, enabling developers to create components quicker than ever before.
• Font APEX 2: there is a new set of high-resolution icons which include much greater detail.
• APEX Advisor now includes a collection of accessibility-focused tests.
• New Chart Types - You can now create Gantt, box-plot, and pyramid charts
• Enhanced Sample Charts application
• New Chart-Level and Series-Level attributes
• Interactive Grids: there is a new Copy Down feature to copy data from one row to other rows.
• Interactive Grids: You can now Copy to Clipboard for row or cell range selections.
• Interactive Grids: User settable report setting "Actions > Format > Stretch" Column Widths and column attribute "Stretch" provides declarative control over how the column width will stretch to fill available space or not
• Documentation of public JavaScript widget APIs
• Page Designer: Updated UI to improve usability and improved "Go to group" functionality
• Sticky Filters: You can now pin keywords to have them persist as you click around Page Designer
• Upgraded jQuery and jQuery UI libraries: jQuery 3.1.1 and jQuery UI 1.12.0
• New Oracle JET libraries: Oracle JET 4.2.0
• APEX Search: Provides quick navigation and unified search experience across APEX. Activate by clicking search button from header, or using the keyboard shortcut.
• New "Text Field with Autocomplete" item type based on Oracle JET Input Search component.
• Developer Toolbar now shows a red indicator if there is any JavaScript error on the page. Page Info > Show Page Timing displays the page performance timing
• Declarative support for touch-based dynamic actions, tap and double tap, press, swipe, and pan, supporting the creation of rich and functional mobile applications
• Universal Theme: There are multiple template options to support mobile UI patterns including sticky headers and footers for button placement
• Universal Theme: There is a new Tabs-based navigation menu template that is optimized for mobile devices.
• Universal Theme: There is a new template option for classic reports to hide pagination when pagination is not available
• Universal Theme Sample App has been enhanced with Mobile UI patterns and a number of other enhancements

• 

  Interactive Grids

  You can now create an interactive grid, a rich, client-side region type that allows rapid editing of multiple rows of data in a dynamic, JSON-enabled grid. Interactive Grid combines the best features from both Interactive Reports and Tabular Forms. With Interactive Grids, developers can now easily render master-detail-detail relationships that can be n-levels deep or across.

• 

  Oracle JET Charts

  The data visualization engine of Oracle Application Express is now powered by Oracle JET (JavaScript Extension Toolkit), a modular open source toolkit based on modern JavaScript, CSS3 and HTML5 design and development principles. This JavaScript charting solution is highly customizable, accessible, interactive, and incorporates automatic responsive design support. With Oracle JET integration into Application Express, you can now build charts that are beautiful, fast, highly customizable, and extremely versatile.

• 

  Universal Theme

  Universal Theme has been streamlined and features improved design and UI throughout all of its components. This release introduces new templates, theme styles and Live Template Options. Live Template Options enables you to customize your application in real time, allowing you to try out various template options to get the perfect UI for your application.

• 

  Application Builder Improvements

  Wizards have been streamlined with smarter defaults and fewer steps, enabling developers to create components quicker than ever before.

• 

  Productivity Apps

  Enhancements to all existing productivity and sample apps, and also introduces three new productivity apps: Competitive Analysis, Quick SQL and REST Client Assistant.

• 

  Wizard Simplification

  Wizards have been streamlined with smarter defaults and fewer steps, enabling developers to create components quicker than ever before.

Other Features

• Universal Theme now provides declarative support for right-to-left languages, modal dialogs that will automatically grow or shrink in height to fit their contents, and over 100 other enhancements
• Font APEX is a new icon library with over 1,100 icons, which has been specifically designed to complement the development of business applications with Oracle Application Express and Universal Theme.
• The Sample Charts app has been completely revamped to showcase the all new Oracle JET Charts
• The Sample Master-Detail app now highlights the different ways related tables can be displayed using a marquee page or different combinations of Interactive Grids
• Three new Sample apps: Sample Interactive Grids, Sample Projects, and Sample REST Services. The Sample Interactive Grids app demonstrates the rich functionality of Interactive Grids including read-only, editable, and advanced capabilities.
• To assist developers with the transition to Page Designer, a new Component View tab is now included in Page Designer. You can see your page as it looks when viewing the Legacy Component View.
• Page Designer now supports a Two Pane mode so you can focus on two panes at a time.
• You can now customize Page Designer by reordering tabs within and across panes.
• You can now quickly search and find a specific attribute or group in the Property Editor by entering part or all of the associated property name in the search dialog. In the Property Editor, changed properties are now indicated with a blue marker until the page has been saved.
• Numerous Improvements to Calendar component include: Inclusive End Date, JavaScript Customization, Dynamic Action Events, and Keyboard Support
• APEX Builder UI enhancements - Rather than just being able to upload a single file (or zip file), developers can now upload multiple files or multiple zip files. This is available in Static Workspace Files, Static Application Files, Theme Files, and Plug-In Files.
• Item Types - File Browse page items can be configured to support multiple file uploads, and can be restricted by file types.
• Page Submit - New Page Attribute "Reload On Submit" allows developers to specify when the page should be reloaded following a page submission. Submitting a page has been changed to not use the parameters of the wwv_flow.accept procedure anymore, instead all page item values are stored in a JSON document which is passed to wwv_flow.accept. With this change,there is no more 200 page items limit per page.