1 Changes in Release 20.2 for Oracle Application Express App Builder User’s Guide

All content in Oracle Application Express App Builder User’s Guide has been updated to reflect release 20.2 functionality and user interface changes.

New Features and Updates

The following are features and updates in Oracle Application Express release 20.2:

• New Cards Region

  Release 20.2 includes a new cards report region that declaratively supports customizations of layout and appearance, and enables you to include icons, badges, media, and actions.

  See "Managing Cards."

• Automations

  Automations are a sequential set of PL/SQL actions triggered by query results. Use automations to monitor data and then perform the appropriate action, such as specific requests and sending email alerts.

  See "Managing Automations."

• Faceted Search Enhancements

  • Display a chart of facet value counts in a dialog or dashboard.

  • Groups of checkbox facets for Boolean columns. Checking the facet will find records that match the 'yes' or 'true' value of the column.

  • Input Field facet type supports comparing a user entered value with the facet column. This comparison enables faceted searches such as finding stores within a user entered number of miles or records where a column contains the user entered text.

  • Performance optimization for distinct value facets.

  See "Managing Faceted Search."

• Report Printing

  • Interactive reports, interactive grids, and classic report all support built-in PDF printing and Excel download if PDF and Excel are enabled as additional download formats in region attributes. Users can also change the page orientation and size in the download dialog.

    See "Configuring Interactive Report Actions Menu Download Options," "Configuring Interactive Grid Download Formats,",and "Managing Classic Report Attributes."

  • Enhanced Integration with BI Publisher.

  • Built-in PDF now supports Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages.

    See "Printing Report Regions."

• REST Data Source Synchronization

  Release 20.2 adds support for data synchronization from a REST Data Source (formerly known as Web Source Module) to a local table. Enable Data Synchronization to keep the contents of a local table automatically in sync with the data from a REST service.

  See "Managing REST Data Sources" and "Managing Data Synchronization."

• New Web Credential Types

  This release introduces new the new Authentication Types: HTTP Header and URL Query String.

  HTTP Header enables developers to use the secure and encrypted credential storage for REST Services which expect an API key as part of the URL. Application Express makes sure that such sensitive parts are not written to debug or execution logs. URL Query String protects an web credential by providing URL pattern. Application Express only uses the Web credential for URLs starting with the given pattern; otherwise an error message is raised. To change the URL pattern, the secret part of the Web Credential needs to be entered again.

  See "Managing Web Credentials."

• Page Designer Includes a New Code Editor

  Page Designer includes a new code editor resulting in a greatly improved code editing experience. The improved editor includes enhanced code completion, syntax highlighting and vastly improved accessibility.

  See "Code Editor."

• Embedded Code Utility

  View all embedded code (such as SQL, PL/SQL and JavaScript) from all pages in an Application Express application presented in easy-to-use faceted search page.

  See Using the Embedded Code Utility.

• Show Messages Icon Moved in Page Designer Toolbar

  When you add a new component to a page, the Show Messages icon only displays in the Page Designer toolbar to indicate what actions are required next. This icon has moved and now displays to the right of Go button in the Page Designer toolbar.

  See "Page Designer Toolbar."

• New and Improved Items

  • The new Check Box single check box item offers an alternative to the Switch item type for Boolean columns. Works in interactive grids as well, even when not in edit mode. The previous Check Box item type has been renamed to Check Box Group.

  • The File Browse item type has been enhanced to support rendering as a drop zone, supporting the drag & drop of a file to be uploaded.

  • The Rich Text Editor item type has been upgraded to use CKEditor 5 and now supports markdown output.

  • The Text Field item type has a new Text Case setting to optionally transform the user entered text to upper or lower case.

  • The Text Field Trim Spaces and Text Case settings and Textarea Trim Spaces settings are now applied on the client as well as the server.

  See "Available Item Types."

• Interactive Grids Includes Support for a Report Alias

  See "Editing the Interactive Grid Saved Report Alias."

• Template Directives

  Use template directives to control how attributes that support substitution strings are processed.

  See "Using Template Directives."

Legacy Components

The following components have been designated as legacy components and have been moved to "Managing Application Legacy Components." Although these components are still supported, they may be deprecated in a future release.

See "Creating Legacy Maps" and "Managing Legacy Websheet Applications."

Deprecated and Desupported Features

See Deprecated Features and Desupported Features in Oracle Application Express Release Notes.