What's New in Oracle APEX 20.1

APEX + Redwood

The user interface of APEX and the App Builder has been refreshed to align with Redwood, Oracle's new user experience design system. The new design and color scheme extends across the full developer experience and provides refreshing new visuals.

The appearance of APEX can now automatically switch between the dark and light appearance modes based on your OS or platform setting, enabling APEX to seamlessly integrate with your workflow.

Faceted Search Enhancements

Faceted Search has been enhanced to allow for cascading list of values, conditional facets and compact count display, among other enhancements.

  • Cascading List of Values

    A facet can have a Cascading List of Values allowing data dependency on another parent facet

  • Conditional Facets

    Hide unwanted facets based on the value of another facet

  • Compact Count Display

    Show compact count such as 1K instead of 1,000 to simplify the display of total count

  • Total Row Count Display

    Automatically include a separate row for total row count

  • Sort by Top Counts of the Facets

    Sort facets based on the total count of entries in each facet, in descending order

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Friendly URLs

The URL syntax for APEX apps has been simplified to allow for friendlier URLs at runtime. The new syntax provides a Search Engine Optimization (SEO)-friendly URL structure which is far easier to understand and provides immediate context as to where you are within an app.

The URL no longer features application or page numbers, and instead, uses the workspace path prefix, application and page aliases, and standard web parameter syntax for its URL structure.

  • Friendly URLs with a single click

    Turn on friendly URLs for your existing apps by editing your application properties and turning on the switch for Friendly URLs.

  • Bye Bye Page Numbers

    Friendly URLs will use the application and page alias in the URL and you can customize these easily from the App Builder. You can also customize the path prefix.

  • Custom Path Prefix

    The friendly URL will include the workspace path prefix. You can change this by going to Workspace Administration, Manage Service, then Set Workspace Preferences.

Improvements in Deployments and Exports

There have been numerous improvements in application lifecycle management including one-click app deployments, automated backups, zip exports, and more. These features make it easy to deploy APEX apps and integrate it into your existing workflow.

  • Automatic Backups

    Your APEX apps will be automatically backed up on a rolling basis as part of daily maintenance. Apps are only backed up if there are changes, and you can have up to 30 backups per app that you can lock, download, or restore at any time.

  • Export App as Zip

    You can now export your APEX apps as a single zip file, which can facilitate integration with GIT / SVN and simplify incremental deployment. The zip file mirrors the directory structure of the APEXExport -split utility and splits your application, pages, and shared components into separate files for easy management.

  • One-Click Remote App Deployment

    Deploy directly to Oracle Autonomous Database (ADB) from on-prem or elsewhere (available once Autonomous Database is upgraded to APEX 20.1 or later).

Native PDF Printing

You can now print PDF files directly from Interactive Grids. This feature produces a PDF file which includes formatting options such as highlighting, column grouping, and column breaks.

  • Native PDF Support in Interactive Grids

    To enable this feature, simply enable PDF as an additional download format in your Interactive Grid's region attributes.

  • Retain Grid Formatting

    Highlighting, control breaks, and column groups are preserved in the PDF file.

  • Customize PDF Settings

    Change the default page size, orientations and different font settings

Mega Menus

Universal Theme now includes Mega Menus for your application's navigation. Mega Menus render the navigation menu as a collapsible floating panel that displays all navigation items at once. It is especially useful for displaying the various aspects of your application and enables direct access to sections of your app.

  • Customization

    There are a number of template options you can use to customize the layout and appearance so it uniquely works for your app.

  • Icons, Descriptions, and Badges

    Items in your mega menus can be extended with icons, descriptions, and even badges using custom list attributes.

  • Responsive

    No matter the layout for larger screens, the mega menu will gracefully adjust its appearance so it fits on a small screen device.

  • Accessible and Keyboard Friendly

    Navigation items within the menu can be accessed and navigated using the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Additional Features

Below are a number of additional features you should familiarize yourself with.

  • Session Timeout Alerts

    Users will now be alerted shortly before their APEX session is about to expire and will have the opportunity to extend it

  • SQL Workshop Enhancements

    SQL Workshop has now been extended to support Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) Collections

  • Interactive Grid Enhancements

    Filtering of data in an Interactive Grid is now supported through URL parameters as well as the new APEX_IG API

  • Library Upgrades

    The version of the Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit (JET) library has been upgraded to version 8.0

  • UI Improvements for RTL Languages

    There have been a number of improvements and bug fixes within Universal Theme for right-to-left languages.

Learn more about Oracle APEX 20.1

Documentation