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Out-of the-Box Web 2.0 Now Available with Oracle Application Express 3.1
A series of new enhancements available with Oracle Application Express 3.1 now make it both faster and easier for midsize organizations to move from traditional spreadsheets to database-centric Web applications.
"With new features ranging from interactive reports and declarative binary large object (BLOB) support to enhanced printing and security, Oracle Application Express 3.1 offers midsize companies the depth of functionality their larger competitors take for granted," says David Peake, product manager, Oracle Application Express.
Other new features include optional runtime-only installation, documented JavaScript libraries, application date format, and application builder refinement—plus the ability to add to the Theme Repository.
Interactive Reporting and Declarative BLOB Support
The new Interactive Reports feature provides out-of-the-box declarative Web 2.0 functionality, dramatically simplifying the process of creating customized reports by end users. For example, users can alter the data layout by choosing the columns they are interested in, then apply filters, highlighting, and sorting.
"Interactive Reports provides spreadsheet-like functionality through your Web browser." explains Peake. "Users no longer have to download their data to local spreadsheets to perform ad-hoc analysis."
In addition, users can define breaks, aggregations, and diverse charts, as well as their own computations. Users can also create multiple variations of the report, save them, or download them to various file formats, including CSV, XLS, PDF, and RTF. Developers need to provide only a simple data query. Oracle Application Express provides everything else.
"And with declarative BLOB support," explains Peake, "files can be declaratively uploaded in forms, or downloaded or displayed using reports. Users can also author reports procedurally with PL/SQL using BLOB display and download functions."
Enhanced Report Printing and Adding to the Theme Repository
With Release 3.1, Report Queries now support multiple SQL statements, allowing for the inclusion of multiple reports in a single document, including the ability to combine reports and charts based on different result sets.
In addition, the output format of a print document can now be set at runtime using a page or application item. And, in addition to PDF, Word, Excel, and HTML, documents can now also be downloaded in XML format.
Users can now also add to the theme repository, extending it beyond the default themes provide with Application Express.
"This new functionality enables you to design a very specific look and feel to meet your corporate requirements and then publish this as a theme for all other applications to use," explains Peake.
Oracle Application Express 3.1 applications are currently available as free downloads from Oracle OTN. To see Application Express 3.1 in action, view the flash demo.
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