Faceted Search is seen pretty often on the internet; typically on shop or sales web sites. The end user can set filters using Facets on the left or upper side of the screen. A facet shows possible values together with the occurrence count within the result set. After the end user changed a facet, results, dependent facets and occurrence counts refresh immediately.
The new Faceted Search feature in APEX 19.2 enables developers to provide fully functional faceted navigation with minimal effort. APEX does all low-level work of coordinating report and facet refresh, generating the required SQL queries to compute counts and integrating the facets with the report region. Developers just declare the report data source, the facets to use with the lists of values to get facet items from.
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A faceted search page in APEX features a faceted search region and report. The faceted search region displays on the left side of the page and enables users to narrow down the search result by selecting facet values. Narrowing the search result, makes it easier for users to find the data they want. The right side of the results region is a classic report which displays in report or card view. Both the Create Application Wizard and Create Page Wizard support the creation of faceted search pages.
New Data Source support, allowing to define the LOV as either Local, REST Enabled SQL or Web Source.
Multiple column support where you can define multiple display columns for the LOV, with additional metadata specifying if the column is displayed, searchable, or requires any format mask.
New declarative Column Mappings, allowing to define the LOV display and return columns, and also some new capability including default sort, group and icon columns.
Now also supports definition of just a single return column, allowing Shared LOVs to be used by item types or plug-ins that only require a single column (eg Text with Autocomplete)
To benefit from the new features of Shared LOVs, you must either create a new Shared LOV, or go into an existing LOV and select 'Convert Legacy SQL'. Then on the LOV edit page, you will see the new functionality available.
The built-in popup LOV component is modernized to allow for dynamic, shared LOVs to include multiple columns and enhanced search capabilities.
Team Development has been reimagined to provide a simple and straight forward way for your APEX team to communicate. By tracking everything in a single place as an Issue, Team Development allows users to assign others, apply classifications using Label Groups and Labels, track progress by assigning Milestones, link issues to an Application and Page and view the full historic timeline of events.
A new notification system allows individual users to register their interest in specific issues and define at a general level what attributes they’re interested in watching. They can also choose whether they wish to be notified in the application, via email, or both.
A full complement of utilities allows Workspace Administrators to manage files, reassignments, reparenting, user notification preferences, and much more.
Oracle APEX is best suited to being co-located with the data it is maintaining / reporting on – Local Data Source.
Oracle APEX provides the ability to execute SQL not only in the "local" Oracle database (where APEX runs in), but also on a remote Oracle instance. This is based on the REST Enabled SQL feature introduced with ORDS When the REST Enabled SQL feature is active on an ORDS instance, SQL statements can be passed in JSON format using HTTP POST requests. Execution results are being passed back as a self-describing JSON response. Clients thus can communicate with the Oracle database using open protocols and without SQL*Net. A prerequisite for using REST Enabled SQL is to have at least ORDS 17.4 installed. Older ORDS versions (3.0.x) do not support REST Enabled SQL.
Oracle APEX provides declarative support for REST Services in Application Express components - that means, developers can create a component, for example, an interactive report, directly on an external REST service. You can register an external REST Service as a Web Source Module in Shared Components and then use it as the data source for a report and form.
You can also integrate into a SOA environment by consuming Web Services (both REST and SOAP) or utilize DB Links to other databases.
The built-in support for REST Enabled SQL and Web Sources is extended to Interactive Grids and allow read and write access to remote data sources.
The data upload functionality in SQL Workshop is extended to allow uploading native Excel, CSV, XML and JSON documents into existing tables.
There have been numerous changes and user experience enhancements to the Oracle APEX App Builder to make it even more productive.
SQL Commands and Quick SQL have been updated to provide syntax highlighting and more.
Be more productive with SQL Workshop with new functionality to display Sample Queries for a given table, easier REST enablement, and the ability to jump into the Create App wizard.
APEX Search now has a much larger index allowing you to navigate directly to more places. You can also perform an application-scoped search simply by entering the application number followed by colon to search within that application (ex. 100:templates to jump to Templates).
You can now edit Template Options, code blocks, text areas, and check box properties for multiple components at once.
Statistics and data analysis of your tables are used to create a Data Dictionary Cache which are used when creating new applications or pages. This cache can be managed from Workspace Administration.
Universal Theme has been refreshed with UI refinements, accessibility improvements, new template options, and deeper control via Theme Roller to help your applications look better than ever.
Universal Theme now has a brand new Theme Style that enables you to add Dark Mode to your applications. Simply select the "Vita - Dark" Theme Style and you're set to go!
The side Navigation Menu can now be fully collapsed via template options.
You can now choose between new layouts and backgrounds for your app's login page.
There is a new Classic Report template that makes it easy to display formatted content with selection, actions, and more.
You can easily upload or define your app's logo using Theme Roller.
