Oracle APEX – What’s Coming in Version 5.0

Jul 15, 2014

Oracle Application Express (APEX) has seen tremendous uptake in recent years due to its rapid and secure web development framework and its quick adoption of modern web development technologies. According to it’s official Statement of Direction, Oracle will continue to invest in the development and support of APEX and new versions of the product will be released annually.

The rapid release of APEX, in addition to the active involvement of the user community in the form of a feature request application, allows Oracle to quickly adapt the product to the latest trends in web development. The major focus of version 4.2 of APEX was on mobile development. The next major release (Version 5.0) will continue to enhance mobile development capabilities and incorporate new features to improve developer productivity. Here are some of the planned features that will be incorporated in release 5.0.

Features of APEX 5.0

HTML5 – The product will continue to enhance HTML5 capabilities. The current version of APEX already has support for HTML5 charts and a limited set of native HTML5 item types. HTML5 is a primary component for mobile development so much improvement is expected in this area.
Web Services Support – Oracle will continue to expand support of RESTful web services and the integration with the APEX Listener.
Tablet User Interfaces – The next release will include themes and templates for the declarative creation of pages and applications for tablet devices.
Drag and Drop Layout Editor – The drag and drop layout editor was introduced in version 3.0 of the product but was removed in version 4.2. In version 5.0 the drag and drop layout editor will be reintroduced due to the compatibility of laying out items in a grid layout.
Packaged Applications – APEX contains a suite of productivity applications that can be used to improve business processes on any project. Included in the suite are a set of sample applications that demonstrates features of the product and can be used as a best practice guide. Version 5.0 will see enhancements and improvements to the framework of the packaged applications.
PDF Printing – There will be enhancements of the PDF printing capabilities that utilize the APEX Listener FOP support. The Apache XSL-FO is currently bundled with the APEX Listener and is an alternative to BI-Publisher for generating PDF output in APEX.
Master / Detail / Detail – A new wizard will be provided that allows for declarative creation of master /detail / detail regions.
Multiple Interactive Reports – This has been a heavily requested feature from the APEX community and will be a welcomed feature in version 5.0
Modal Dialogs – Version 5.0 will enhance the ability to declaratively define modal dialogs. In previous versions of the product developers had to rely on third-party plugins for this capability.

DesTech – Oracle APEX Specialists

Developing sophisticated applications since 1991, the team at DesTech have utilized a variety of development platforms. Our team has been very excited about the capabilities, ease-of-use, and development speed that APEX delivers.