What Are Dependencies?

When an extension is listed as a dependency, that means you can reference any of that extension's resources, like a service connection or Layout while building your own App UI. It also means that you can configure (customize) the extension's App UIs to meet your own business needs.

The Navigator in the Designer has a section called From Dependencies. At a minimum, you'll see the Unified Application listed here, which serves as the underpinning to the Oracle Cloud Applications ecosystem. Depending on how you came to Visual Builder Studio, you may also see other extensions listed here as well:

Description of the illustration dependnames.png

In this example, the extension Redwood Reference Application is listed as a dependency, which contains the App UI rwdref. That means that you can now open rwdref and tweak any of its pages that contain extendable artifacts—dynamic tables or forms, dynamic containers, variables, and so on. In addition, you can use the fragments in the Redwood Reference Application's Fragments folder in your own App UIs. If a fragment in this folder has at least one artifact that has been marked as extendable, you can also customize the fragment for your own use. Your extension has access to everything contained within its dependent extensions.

Why might you see an extension/App UI under From Dependencies?

• You jumped over from Oracle Cloud Applications by clicking Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio. VB Studio automatically adds the name of the extension/App UI containing the page you were just viewing to the list of dependencies.
• When you created a workspace, you selected New Application Extension and chose an App UI (instead of None) in the Base Oracle Cloud Application field:
  
  Description of the illustration newappextensionnotexpanded.png
  

  Note:

  If you chose None in this field, you won't have any dependencies listed when you land in the Designer. None is usually used when you know you want to create a new App UI, or if you want extend the Unified Application.

If you don’t see the App UI that you want to configure, you can add it from Dependencies, where all available dependencies are listed by pillar for easier identification:

Description of the illustration listofdependencies.png

Keep in mind that you add the extension containing the App UI as a dependency, not the App UI itself.

Simply put, you add an extension as a dependency when you want to a) configure an App UI (that is, make changes to it) that lives inside the extension, or b) access the resources in the extension, like service connections or Layouts, while building your own App UI.

The Unified Application provides global services and a common user interface shell to all of the App UIs that plug into it, whether created by Oracle or developed at your enterprise. For this reason, it's considered a dependency for everything in the Oracle Cloud Applications ecosystem. You don’t have to worry about this underpinning, but you should know that it, too, is configurable; all you have to do is open the Unified Application and modify it, just as you would any other App UI.

Note:

If you’re building your own App UI and want to make it available to others to configure, you must be sure that the App UI includes at least one extendable artifact—a variable, a dynamic component, or something else marked Available to extensions. If it doesn’t, the extension won’t appear in the Dependencies picker.