Sunday, October 14, 2012

Oracle Application Express (APEX) 4.2 production

A few hours ago Oracle made APEX 4.2 available for download.

If it's the first time you look at 4.2, you can read about the many new features. With every release I have to say the same thing... it's the best release ever :-)

Obviously mobile is a big topic in 4.2, but for me personally I like the integration of HTML5 and CSS3 the most. At OOW, OTN asked me about APEX 4.2 and what I liked... there are so many, but the support for Responsive web design is the "key feature" for me to create future applications in a declarative way. That interview was even done before Shakeeb's excellent presentation about Responsive Web Design and his nice video.


Next to release, the APEX Development team updated apex.oracle.com with a fresh new look and feel! It looks very similar to the Oracle Cloud now. I like it very much.


So go and download 4.2 and start playing with it in your own environment today!
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12 comments:

  1. Lutfi Hedir10/15/2012 7:00 AM

    Hi...is there any patch available to upgrade from 4.1 to 4.2?

    Lutfi

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dimitri Gielis10/15/2012 7:03 AM

    Hi Lutfi,

    It's a full installation, but it will upgrade (copy) your existing applications.

    Behind the scenes Oracle creates a new schema APEX_040200 and keeps APEX_040100, but all meta-data will be migrated to the APEX 4.2 engine.
    This allows you, if you did want to go back to APEX 4.1 you can do it.

    Hope that helps,
    Dimitri

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lutfi Hedir10/15/2012 7:18 AM

    oh..ok it's mean we must fresh install apex 4.2 on existing apex 4.1 and then drop user APEX_040100 ?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dimitri Gielis10/15/2012 7:22 AM

    Correct.

    But you have the choice to keep APEX_040100 for some time (it won't get updated anymore, it's just there if you wanted to go back) or delete it immediately.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dimitri Gielis10/15/2012 7:22 AM

    On a general note I recommend to read the installation guide and release notes (especially changed behaviour).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lutfi Hedir10/15/2012 7:31 AM

    thanks dimitri ..
    but right now some problem when fresh install on oracle xe 11g (XE fresh install too).


    ERROR at line 1:
    ORA-04063: package body "APEX_040200.WWV_FLOW_UTILITIES" has errors
    ORA-06508: PL/SQL: could not find program unit being called:
    "APEX_040200.WWV_FLOW_UTILITIES"
    ORA-06512: at "APEX_040200.WWV_FLOW_UPGRADE", line 4962
    ORA-06512: at line 4*
    ERROR at line 1:
    ORA-04063: package body "APEX_040200.WWV_FLOW_UTILITIES" has errors
    ORA-06508: PL/SQL: could not find program unit being called:
    "APEX_040200.WWV_FLOW_UTILITIES"
    ORA-06512: at "APEX_040200.WWV_FLOW_UPGRADE", line 4962
    ORA-06512: at line 4

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dimitri Gielis10/15/2012 8:40 AM

    I saw you posted your issue on the OTN forum https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=2451871&tstart=0
    That is the place to be indeed...

    If you are on Windows I saw some tweets about people saying you have to unpack in c:\temp (\apex), but they got another error than you so not sure it's related.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous10/20/2012 11:37 PM

    Hi,
    I'm using Apex since 2008. Specially to develop management systems. In apex 4.1 we made a lot of interactive dashboards with anychart, based on xml files automatically generated with PL/SQL. Now we upgrade to Apex 4.2 and can't see the region source. In this area we reference dinamically the xml file (depending on page's element selection). Any idea to solve this problem? Why the region source was removed?
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous10/21/2012 12:08 AM

    Hi,
    Me again.. this is part of the code the code in the region source:

    <....name="movie" value="#IMAGE_PREFIX#flashchart/anychart_full/swf/AnyChart.swf?XMLFile=#IMAGE_PREFIX#DASHBOARDS/DASHP1000_&P1000_MEDICION.&P1000_TIPCOM..XML?p=&APP_ID.:&FLOW_PAGE_ID.:&APP_SESSION.:FLOW_FLASH_CHART_R#REGION_ID#">

    <embed src="#IMAGE_PREFIX#flashchart/anychart_full/swf/AnyChart.swf?XMLFile=#IMAGE_PREFIX#DASHBOARDS/DASHP1000_&P1000_MEDICION.&P1000_TIPCOM..XML?p=&APP_ID.:&FLOW_PAGE_ID.:&APP_SESSION.:FLOW_FLASH_CHART_R#REGION_ID#"

    "

    with &P1000_MEDICION. and &P1000_TIPCOM. i bulding the xml filename in the APEX images directory. the xml file was created with a PL/SQL

    ReplyDelete
  10. Dimitri Gielis10/21/2012 1:33 AM

    Hi Rodrigo,

    I gave that feedback to the APEX Development team during the beta testing, but they said it's like that by design, as charts are declarative and for example with a calendar you don't see the code behind the scenes either.

    You can create an html region or pl/sql region to do your charts manually or you can download our plugin that does it for you.

    Dimitri

    ReplyDelete
  11. Bifin11/29/2012 6:20 PM

    Hi
    I use Report Template: Fixed Headers APEX 4.2
    How to expand a scrolling window?

    ReplyDelete
  12. xyz7/20/2017 3:04 PM

    I have an IR in apex 4.1.I have Made the report horizontally scrollable which only scrolls the report and doesn't scroll the page as whole.hence the IR column heading menu is to the extreme right when I click the last column header.can you please let me know how to fix the position of the column header menu.

    ReplyDelete