What's New in Oracle APEX 21.1

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!

  • Oracle Spatial Support

    GeoJSON, simple numeric columns, or columns of the SDO_GEOMETRY type can be mapped with ease. Also leverage Oracle Spatial features such as Spatial SQL functions, indexing, coordinate transformations and much more.

  • Fully Customizable

    You can easily customize the look and feel of your maps, use the built-in color schemes for thematic visualizations and heat maps, and select from a variety of built-in SVG shapes and marker icons to make your maps shine.

  • Powerful

    Create maps with layers for points, lines, polygons, 3D polygons, and heat maps; set them up with faceted search; or go deeper with dynamic actions and the JavaScript API.

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.

  • Easy to use

    Data loading is as simple as selecting a file to upload, viewing a preview of the data, and then loading it in.

  • Powerful Capabilities

    Data Loading can be configured to append, replace, or merge data, perform data conversions using transformation rules and lookup queries, and even load data into tables or collections.

  • Advanced Column Mapping

    Vastly improved the end-user data loading experience by using simple names or regular expressions to pre-assign column mappings.

  • Data Loading API

    The new apex_data_loading API provides you with all the hooks needed to handle custom Data Load processing.

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.

  • Show or Hide Facets

    Facets now support Display Toggling, allowing end users to easily show or hide facets. Facets that are hidden will not be counted and do not have a performance impact.

  • Maps and Calendar Support

    Your faceted search now supports Calendar and Map regions.

UI and Theme Roller Updates

Take greater control over your application's user interface with the new icons in Font APEX, modernized CSS in Universal Theme, performance improvements, and more.

  • Font APEX 2.2

    There are 95 new icons to pick, including several icons for medical apps, several map markers, new file types.

  • Universal Theme CSS Modernization

    The style sheets have been completely refactored and now use CSS variables, grid layout, flex-box, among other things, to provide a more modern and robust user interface.

  • Improved Performance

    We have updated Universal Theme to rely less upon JS for layout, and have also reduced the CSS file sizes for Universal Theme by 15%, to help with page load and rendering performance.

  • Refreshed Redwood Light Theme Style

    Redwood Light has been updated to even closer align with Oracle's Redwood Design System, and now supports customization options using Theme Roller.

  • Row and Theme Style CSS Classes

    You can now define CSS classes for Grid Rows and Theme Styles to provide additional flexibility for creating complex page layouts.

Improvements to REST Data Sources

  • CSV Data Support

    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. Build reports or charts directly on the REST Data Source, or use the Synchronization feature to schedule data loading to a local table.

  • REST Data Source Conversions

    Similar to Data Loading, 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. This enables you to prepare your REST Data Source for easy consumption within your APEX application.

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.

  • PL/SQL Markdown API

    The new apex_markdown API enables you to easily convert Markdown shorthand to HTML.

  • Markdown Formatted Items

    The Display Only item type now supports a new Format setting to display formatted Markdown content.

  • Markdown Formatted Columns

    The Markdown column type has been renamed to Rich Text and is now available in both Interactive and Classic Reports.

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.

  • Different display modes

    Supported display modes are JET-based Popup, Inline, and Native HTML. All display modes support both Date, and Date and Time.

  • Show Time Attribute

    Time is enabled through a new dedicated attribute 'Show Time'.

  • Dynamic Minimum and Maximum dates

    The New Date Picker item is able to define date ranges between items (e.g., 'From' and 'To').

  • Improved UX

    Improved UX on year and month selection, additional appearance options (e.g., 'Show Week' and 'Days Outside Month'), and a few other new attributes.

Security Improvements

  • Escape Special Characters in Application Items

    There is now an attribute for Application Items that allows you to escape special characters. This setting is applied when accessing application items via substitution syntax.

  • Referrer-Policy HTTP Header

    APEX now sends a default Referrer-Policy HTTP header so session IDs are no longer sent with the Referrer header on external links.

  • Markdown Format Default for Rich Text Editor

    The Rich Text Editor now defaults to output in Markdown format to provide the best out-of-the-box security.

  • Maximum Session Idle Timeout

    The maximum session idle timeout has been increased from 12 hours to 24 hours.

Developer Experience

  • Import Application Exports as ZIP

    You can now import zip files of application exports, including zips of applications split using the APEXExport utility.

  • SQL Workshop Enhancements

    SQL Workshop now includes a new Create Spatial Index wizard.

  • Application and Page Checksums

    You can now find application and page checksums for easy comparisons across different environments.

  • Code Editor Improvements

    There are numerous improvements to the code editor within the App Builder, including toggling between upper and lower case using Ctrl-Alt-C, marking of non-existent page items, and several additional editor options for Minimap, Show Suggestions, Show Line Numbers, Show Whitespace, Accessibility Mode, and more.

Reporting Improvements

  • Lazy Loading

    Classic and Interactive Reports now support Lazy Loading, where report data is not loaded until the page has been rendered, or the current tab has been activated. Enabling the Lazy Loading toggle improves initial page load speed, primarily for pages containing reports with long-running queries.

  • Report Printing in Arabic and Hebrew

    Report printing supports complex text layout languages, such as Hebrew and Arabic, when exporting to PDF.

  • Variable Height Rows in Interactive Grids

    Interactive Grids now support variable height rows by setting the 'Appearance: Fixed Row Height' property to Off.

Additional Features

  • Dynamic Action Enhancements

    You can now define Client-Side Conditions, Server-Side Conditions, Authorizations, and Build Options for Actions of Dynamic Actions.

  • Improved Number Field Page Item Type

    The Number Field page item type now does automatic formatting according to its format mask and client side validation.

  • Updated Color Picker Page Item Type

    The Color Picker page item type has been updated to utilize the Oracle JET Color Spectrum component and contains new functionality for different display modes, color presets, contrast checking, and multiple value return formats (HEX, RGB/RGBA, HSL/HSLA, or any CSS color value).

  • Client-side Validation Improvements

    The client-side validation messaging is more consistent with server validation messaging, and no longer displays the error pop-up.

  • APEX API Enhancements

    There's now GeoJSON and SDO_GEOMETRY support in the APEX_JSON and APEX_EXEC packages.

  • JavaScript Library Upgrades

    We've updated several JavaScript libraries to newer releases including Oracle JET 10, FullCalendar 5.5.1, CKEditor5 27, and Monaco Editor 0.22.3.

Explore Previous Releases

View Release Notes