Database Reference
In-Depth Information
And so we arrive at the release of APEX 4.2. In our opinion, the changes introduced
with APEX 4.0 through APEX 4.2 have truly brought the development environment in-
to the realm of “forces to be reckoned with.” The original focus of APEX 4.0 was to
make development of rich interactive Web 2.0 applications easier by making the pro-
cess as declarative as possible. With APEX 4.2, the development team has introduced
so many new features—indeed, new ways to attack problems—that it will be hard
not
to choose APEX as the preferred development platform for Oracle-based applications.
APEX's dynamic actions provide a way for you to define client-side behaviors, such
as enabling or disabling fields or regions declaratively without JavaScript. With some
JavaScript knowledge under your belt, you can create complex dynamic actions that do
client-side calculations, AJAX, and more.
An improved charting engine based on the latest version of AnyChart not only
provides declarative Flash-based charts, gauges, maps, and Gantt charts, but also al-
lows you to create HTML5-based charts that run on any platform, including those that
don't support Adobe Flash. All chart types are interactive and drillable, and several
charts can be combined into a dashboard style interface.
Another exciting feature is the plug-in architecture that provides an extensible
framework allowing APEX community members to build and share their own custom
items, regions, processes, and dynamic action types. Although the ramifications of this
might not be immediately apparent, the possibilities of what can and will be developed
using the plug-in architecture are virtually limitless—and that is very good news for
all
APEX developers.
As a user of the APEX development platform, you no longer have to wait for the
APEX team to respond to specific feature requests. You can take the future of APEX
into your own hands and code missing features, actions, and item types. In fact, the au-
thors see a future where the APEX team uses the plug-in architecture to extend APEX
in many different directions.
We almost can't overstate the significance of plug-ins. Although APEX 4 is defin-
itely a giant leap forward from the architecture of APEX 3, the plug-in architecture
blows the doors wide open to change from the broad and growing community of APEX
developers.
From version 4.0, APEX now comes with a Team Development feature that eases
the management of the development process by tracking features, to-do lists, bugs, and
milestones. A user-feedback mechanism is also included that allows users to provide
inline feedback while using the system. The feature automatically captures the user's
session-state information so you can see exactly what was going on during their ses-
sion. You can then take this information and create a bug or a to-do entry with the
simple click of a button.
