6 Deprecated Features

Deprecated features are features which Oracle plans to desupport or remove in a future release of Oracle APEX. If a feature is related to application metadata or an API, existing applications can still use the feature, but Oracle strongly recommends that developers start to modify their applications as described in this section. Use APEX Advisor to scan existing applications for deprecated attributes.

• Deprecated Query Builder
• Deprecated APEX Item Markup
• Deprecated User Interfaces Removed
• Deprecated APIs and Parameters
• Deprecated jQuery/JET Date Pickers

6.1 Deprecated Query Builder

SQL Workshop Query Builder is deprecated as of this release. Query Builder is currently supported, but will be removed in a future release.

6.2 Deprecated APEX Item Markup

Future releases of APEX may include fixes and improvements to the accessibility, usability, and functionality of various items that require changing the markup or using custom elements (web components). These changes may create more dynamic behaviors for items, and will be done in a way that minimizes impact to items and forms in existing apps.

The apex.item namespace and item interface are the only supported APIs for customizing and programatically working with items. APEX discourages customizations that rely on undocumented item markup or CSS classes, as these may not work as expected in future releases.

Assumptions about the HTML markup used by each of the native APEX items may not hold in the future. Item customization through Advanced attributes (CSS Classes), Custom Attributes, JavaScript code, and CSS rules that assumes particular markup could break.

For example, you could make the text area item character counter bold by adding class important-text to the Advanced: CSS Classes attribute of a text area and then add a custom CSS rule like:

.important-text.apex-item-textarea + .apex-item-textarea-counter { 
    font-weight: bold;
}

This currently works, but may not in the future because it relies on undocumented class names and the counter element directly following the textarea element. It is also not a best practice to add event handlers in Custom Attributes.

Future releases may document new custom element markup, classes, and CSS variables to allow more supportable customization.

6.3 Deprecated User Interfaces Removed

APEX previously defined multiple users interfaces for each application. This is no longer the case. This release cleans up deprecated user interfaces, which impacts many APEX Dictionary Views:

• Obsolete views:
  • apex_workspace_ui_types
  • apex_appl_user_interfaces
• New view columns:
  • apex_applications.theme_style_by_user_pref
  • apex_applications.built_with_love
  • apex_applications.navigation_list
  • apex_applications.navigation_list_position
  • apex_applications.nav_bar_type
  • apex_applications.nav_bar_list
  • apex_applications.include_legacy_javascript
  • apex_applications.include_jquery_migrate
• Obsolete view columns:
  • apex_applications.ui_detection_css_urls
  • apex_appl_concatenated_files.user_interface_id
  • apex_application_pages.user_interface_id
  • apex_application_pages.page_transition
  • apex_application_pages.popup_transition
  • apex_application_themes.ui_type_id
  • apex_application_themes.ui_type_name
  • apex_application_themes.default_page_transition
  • apex_application_themes.default_popup_transition
  • apex_appl_plugins.supported_ui_types
  • apex_appl_plugin_std_attrs.supported_ui_types
  • apex_appl_plugin_attributes.supported_ui_types
• Removed Page Designer Properties:
  • Page Transition
  • Popup Transition
  • User Interface

Older applications created when APEX could have two User Interfaces now only use the active user interface. Inactive user interfaces are removed from the metadata.

6.4 Deprecated APIs and Parameters

PL/SQL APIs

Deprecated parameters:

• For apex_instance_admin.add_web_entry_point, the parameter p_methods is deprecated.

JavaScript APIs

Deprecated JavaScript APIs:

• apex.pwa.getInstallText

6.5 Deprecated jQuery/JET Date Pickers

jQuery/JET Date Pickers are now deprecated and cannot be used for new pages or applications. The old jQuery Date Picker JavaScript APIs are not supported.

The JET Date Picker will be removed in a future release. Oracle recommends replacing all old Date Pickers with the new Date Picker.