New month. New leader. All in all some twelve features changed positions. Where does your favorite APEX 5.2 feature rank?
Biggest Mover Up: REST Enabled SQL Support [ +4 ]
Biggest Mover Down: New Create App Wizard [ -2 ]
Previous Rankings: January 2018
Editor’s note: Each month, we’ll power rank the rumored enhancements ahead of Oracle APEX 5.2’s GA release. We’ll take the pulse of the APEX community, monitoring comments, talking to you all and gauging the interest, enthusiasm and expected impact of each of these enhancements. If you’re looking forward to a particular feature, make sure to tweet or blog about it. It just may affect the rankings!Power Rankings are based on a preponderance of social media. If you have an issue with these Oracle APEX 5.2 rankings, or have a question or comment for Monty Latiolais, send him an e-mail or contact him via Twitter.
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- 16
Advisor Improvements
Last month’s ranking: 16th [ No change ]- New Accessibility checks to check your apps for common accessibility issues
- New Performance check for inclusion of compatibility JavaScript
- 16
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- 15
List View Region
Last month’s ranking: 14th [ -1 ]- The List View region from the deprecated mobile UI is support on desktop UI. See the known issues for current limitations.
- 14
Tree Region Enhancements
Last month’s ranking: 13th [ -1 ]- The Advanced: JavaScript Initialization Code attribute is supported. Although the attribute was added in 5.1 it did not do anything. So it is as if it is a new attribute in Oracle APEX 5.2. This plus the jsdoc makes it much easier to customize the Tree region.
- Something that will be needed now that jsTree is removed.
- Added Default Icon attribute. Allow Icon Type to be empty (without forcing a-Icon).
- Improved Page Designer help text for all attributes.
- Support Dynamic Action Event Selection Change [Tree].
- Advanced Config option (nodeSelector) to support checkbox selection.
- Tree region now supports the apex.region API.
- Copy selection to clipboard
- 13
Additional JET Charts
Last month’s ranking: 12th [ -1 ]- Gantt – based on Oracle JET Gantt
- Box Plot ( aka Box & Whisker )
- Pyramid
- Sample Charts app – revised with new examples
- 12
Item Type Improvements
Last month’s ranking: 15th [ +3 ]- New ‘Text with Autocomplete’ item type using Oracle JET
- 11
Text message substitutions
Last month’s ranking: 11th [ No change ]- For a given text message MY_MESSAGE, you can now use and v(‘APP_TEXT$MY_MESSAGE’) to retrieve the message text.
- Use APP_TEXT$MY_MESSAGE$XX to return the translation text for language XX (examples for XX are DE, FR, …)
- Same syntax is supported on the client via the apex.util.applyTemplate API
- 10
Oracle JET and jQuery Library Upgrades
Last month’s ranking: 9th [ -1 ]- JET 4.1.0
- jQuery 3.1.1
- jQuery UI 1.12.0
- jsTree 3rd party library is removed because it is incompatible with new versions. Tree regions will be converted to use the APEX treeView widget.
- FullCalendar 3.3.1
- 9
APEX Spotlight Search
Last month’s ranking: 10th [ +1 ]- Provides quick navigation and unified search experience across APEX
- Activate by clicking search button from header, or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + ‘
- You can navigate to most screens within APEX builder
- Quickly jump across applications and pages
- Also works in Page Designer – can focus on page components
- 8
New Authentication
Last month’s ranking: 8th [ No change ]- OAuth2 authentication for APEX Applications and the APEX Development Environment
- 7
Developer Toolbar Improvements
Last month’s ranking: 6th [ -1 ]- When there is a JavaScript error on the page an indicator is added to the dev toolbar
- New feature to see page performance timing. Menu Page Info > Show Page Timing. Show/Hide Layout Columns moved to Page Info menu.
- 6
JavaScript API Documentation
Last month’s ranking: 7th [ +1 ]- Preview of JavaScript API documentation
- 5
Interactive Grid Enhancements
Last month’s ranking: 4th [ -1 ]- Copy Down support and range selection; see new Actions > Selection sub menu (Fill and Clear)
- Copy to Clipboard (for row or cell range selections)
- Expose additional events to Dynamic Actions
- 4
Page Designer Improvements
Last month’s ranking: 3rd [ -1 ]- Property Editor
- Updated UI to improve usability
- Removed show common / show all, and collapse all / expand all functionality
- When a property has focus, the group becomes highlighted
- Improved ‘Go to group’ functionality
- Sticky Filters
- Filters can now be pinned so you can filter on something and click across to other components maintaining the filter
- Property Editor
- 3
New Create App Wizard
Last month’s ranking: 1st [ -2 ]- New and improved user experience for creating applications
- Simpler wizards for creating pages
- Add common frameworks or “features” to applications such as activity reporting, access control, theme selection and more
- Customize user interface options such as Theme Style, application icon and page icons
- Leverage existing applications or UI defaults to default labels and form display types
- 2
REST Service Consumption
Last month’s ranking: 2nd [ No change ]- Create and maintain references to REST services (Web Source Modules) within Shared Components
- Leverage Oracle REST Data Services features like server-side filtering or pagination to fetch only required data from the REST service
- Use Simple HTTP for generic REST services, JSON or XML data feeds
- Have Application Express automatically discover and maintain the Data Profile; no manual SQL or PL/SQL coding is required for JSON or XML parsing
- Use Web Sources as the data source for Classic Reports, Interactive Reports, Oracle JET Charts or the CSS Calendar
- Use the APEX_EXEC PL/SQL package in order to invoke REST services from within custom PL/SQL code in Plug-Ins or page processes.
- 1
REST Enabled SQL Support
Last month’s ranking: 5th [ +4 ]- Create and maintain references to REST Enabled SQL instances (Oracle REST Data Services) in Shared Components
- Use a REST Enabled SQL Service and therefore a remote Oracle database as the data source for Classic Reports, Interactive Reports, Oracle JET Charts or CSS Calendar
- Execute PL/SQL page processes on a remote Oracle database
- Use the APEX_EXEC PL/SQL package to execute SQL Queries or PL/SQL blocks on a remote database, from within your custom PL/SQL code.
- 15
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“REST enabled SQL is something I’m really looking forward to. Clients will want to connect to all these disparate data repositories that were previously inaccessible or required cumbersome data conversions. Or worse, data syncing code. The code for synchronizing data is complex and complicated and if you need to sync both ways forget about it. The new REST Enabled SQL feature in APEX 5.2 promises a direct path to writing Classic and Interactive Reports that are based on remote data sources.”
— Jorge Rimblas at Insum Solutions
