Oracle Application Express 4.2.2 now available

Oracle Application Express 4.2.2 is now released and available for download.  If you wish to download the full release of Oracle Application Express 4.2.2, you can get it from the Downloads page on OTN.  If you have Application Express 4.2 or 4.2.1 already installed, then you need to download the APEX 4.2.2 patch set from My Oracle Support.  Look up patch number 16277995.

As is stated in the patch set note that accompanies the Oracle Application Express 4.2.2 patch set:

• If you have Oracle Application Express release 4.2 or 4.2.1 installed, download the Oracle Application Express 4.2.2 patch set from My Oracle Support and apply it.  Remember - patch number 16277995.
• If you have Oracle Application Express release 4.1.1 or earlier installed (including Oracle HTML DB release 1.5), download and install the entire Oracle Application Express 4.2.2 release from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).
• If you do not have Oracle Application Express installed, download and install the entire Oracle Application Express 4.2.2 release from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).

As usual, there are a large number of issues corrected in the Application Express 4.2.2 patch set.  You can see the full list in the patch set note.

Like all patch sets for Oracle Application Express, there are a large number of functional issues corrected in this release.  But also with the APEX 4.2.2 patch set are a large number of updates to the packaged applications - improved user interface, improved layout and functionality, improved accessibility, improved security, and a fair number of functional bugs corrected.  Also in APEX 4.2.2 is a new often-requested application called Survey Builder.  This application was architected by John Snyders, who did a masterful job in its creation.  I truly think Survey Builder has the potential to be a "killer" APEX application.

Great Lakes Oracle Conference - May 14/15, 2013

The Great Lakes Oracle Conference will be held on May 14/15, 2013 at the Cleveland State University campus.  Registration includes two full days of training with more than 30 sessions to choose from, vendor exhibits to peruse, lunches, and a networking reception.  And if that weren't enough, there will be keynote presentations from Chris Date and Tom Kyte.

There are actually three pre-conference workshops (at additional nominal cost) on three totally distinct topics - All About Binding from Tom Kyte, Oracle Performance Research Seminar from Craig Shallahamer, and Oracle Application Express - I Never Knew It Was So Easy! from me.  If you've wanted to get your feet wet with Oracle Application Express, this may be the workshop for you - completely hands on - building, tuning, debugging and monitoring APEX applications.  This is geared toward the beginner/intermediate developer - no knowledge of APEX is assumed.

I reviewed the list of presentations and presenters, and I'm convinced this is one of the highest quality events available in the Midwest (U.S.).  The early registration rate for the conference is $250 until April 12.

Invalid database objects on apex.oracle.com?

Most people are aware of apex.oracle.com, the demonstration instance of Oracle Application Express.  It's primarily used for people to "kick the tires" of APEX.  Last week alone, there were 810 new workspaces approved on this instance.

Changes are coming to apex.oracle.com - it's going to be consolidated onto other hardware and also Oracle Database Vault will be installed and implemented.  Part of the process of installing Oracle Database Vault includes running the script $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/utlrp.sql.  This script will attempt to recompile all invalid objects in the database.

As of today, 08-MAR-2013, there are 62,197 invalid database objects across all of the workspaces on apex.oracle.com - not that bad, considering there are 17,447 APEX workspaces and 17,984 workspace schemas.  However, it takes a long time to attempt to recompile 62,197 invalid database objects.  And this will only serve to dramatically increase the outage time for this instance.

Thus:

1. A listing of all invalid database objects in the workspace schemas was computed today, 08-MAR-2013.
2. A second listing of all invalid database objects in the workspace schemas will be computed again on 13-MAR-2013.
3. All invalid objects contained in both reports will be immediately dropped with no chance of recovery (as the Recycle Bin will be purged).

Update March 12, 2013:  This drop and purge will no longer occur on 13-MAR-2013, nor at any time in the future.  We were able to make significant progress in the reduction in the number of invalid objects (reduced by 85%).  Thus, we're going to live with the additional outage time cause by this recompilation instead of dropping objects in workspace schemas.

Dude, Where Are My Buttons?

An interesting bug was reported the other day on the Oracle Technology Network discussion forum for Oracle Application Express.  The scenario is as follows:

1)  Download and install Oracle Application Express 4.2.1 anew.
2)  Install a translated version of Oracle Application Express
3)  Login to a workspace and navigate to SQL Workshop.

What should look like:

is actually displayed as:

Unfortunately, the buttons of SQL Workshop are not displayed when you install a translated version of Oracle Application Express 4.2.1.  [If you had Oracle Application Express 4.2 installed and downloaded/installed the Oracle Application Express 4.2.1 patch set from My Oracle Support, you would not encounter this issue.]

This problem can be remedied by downloading the patch set exception for Bug 16191354 from My Oracle Support and applying it to your APEX 4.2.1 instance.

Note - if you choose to install additional translated versions, it's safe to re-run the patch 16191354 after you've installed all translations.

Update:  As of January 29, 2013, the APEX 4.2.1 download was updated to correct this problem.  So if you download the apex_4.2.1.zip file (full distribution) after January 29, 2013, you should not encounter this problem and you can safely ignore this blog post.

Oracle Application Express 4.2.1 now available

Oracle Application Express 4.2.1 is now released and available for download.  If you wish to download the full release of Oracle Application Express 4.2.1, you can get it from the Downloads page on OTN.  If you have Application Express 4.2 already installed, then you need to download the APEX 4.2.1 patch set from My Oracle Support.  Look up patch number 14732511.

As is stated in the patch set note that accompanies the Oracle Application Express 4.2.1 patch set:

• If you have Oracle Application Express release 4.2 installed, download the Oracle Application Express 4.2.1 patch set from My Oracle Support and apply it.  Remember - patch number 14732511.
• If you have Oracle Application Express release 4.1.1 or earlier installed (including Oracle HTML DB release 1.5), download and install the entire Oracle Application Express 4.2.1 release from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).
• If you do not have Oracle Application Express installed, download and install the entire Oracle Application Express 4.2.1 release from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).

As usual, there are a large number of issues corrected in the Application Express 4.2.1 patch set.  You can see the full list in the patch set note.

P.S.  Don't be alarmed when the patch set note refers to file p14732511_421_GENERIC.zip and the file you actually download from My Oracle Support is p14732511_420_Generic.zip.  These are the same file and this version number will be corrected over the weekend.

APEX 4.2 and Textareas

There is a change in behavior in Oracle Application Express 4.2.0.00.27 that I thought was worth making special mention of.

Most page items have a property named "Maximum Width".  The purpose of this attribute, as the item-level help states, is to "specify the maximum number of character users are allowed to type into this form element."  Thus, if you were to specify a value of 255, then end users theoretically would not be able to enter more than 255 characters for the item value.

Prior to Oracle Application Express 4.2.0.00.27, this attribute for Maximum Width was not emitted in the HTML for Textarea page items.  You could have had a Maximum Width of 255 or 4000 or 32000 - it didn't matter.  The amount of text that could be entered by your users was essentially unconstrained (up to the 32,000 limit that can be POSTed).  In Oracle Application Express 4.2.0.00.27, Textarea page items are now properly including this attribute in the HTML for the page item.

Prior to APEX 4.2.0.00.27, my Textarea named P2_RESUME, with a Maximum Width of 2000, might be rendered like this:

But in APEX 4.2.0.00.27, my Textarea named P2_RESUME, with a Maximum Width of 2000, will now render like this:

A number of internal and external customers have rightfully complained about Oracle Application Express 4.2.0.00.27 breaking functionality in their existing applications.  Previously, end users were able to enter a large amount of text in textareas, but now "APEX limits what can be entered by end users."  And this directly relates to the Maximum Width attribute, which most developers were able to safely ignore for textareas in the past, but in 4.2.0.00.27, it is very relevant.

I can offer the following suggestions and direction:

1) If you wish to query the APEX data dictionary for all items in your application(s) which may be impacted by this change, you can issue the query:

select application_id, page_id, page_name, item_name, item_element_max_length
  from apex_application_page_items
 where display_as_code = 'NATIVE_TEXTAREA'
 order by 1,2,3,4

2)  In the forthcoming Oracle Application Express 4.2.1 patch set, this Maximum Width property of textarea items will only be emitted when the application-level attribute Compatibility Mode is 4.2 or later.  Thus, if you are upgrading from Oracle Application Express 4.1.1 or earlier, the Compatibility Mode will not be set to 4.2 and your application behavior will remain the same.

3)  There is a patch set exception on My Oracle Support, Patch ID 15829665, which implements the above-mentioned "Compatibility Mode" behavior.  You can download this PSE (i.e., "one-off patch") and apply it to Oracle Application Express 4.2.0.00.27 today.

Note that this "maxlength" attribute for textareas is not enforced by Internet Explorer.

Oracle Application Express 4.2 released

Oracle Application Express 4.2 was officially released today and is available for download from the Oracle Technology Network.

The main goal of Oracle Application Express 4.2 is to enable the easy development of mobile applications, using the same declarative infrastructure and methodology of APEX.  As detailed here, the marquee features of Oracle Application Express 4.2 include:

• Application Builder for Mobile
• Both mobile and responsive themes
• HTML5 Charts
• HTML5 Item Types
• Packaged Applications
• RESTful Web Services
• and many more...

As we do for every release, we offer our gratitude to the countless people who participated in the Application Express 4.2 Early Adopter program and provided feedback, suggestions and bug reports.