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Release 3.2 New Feature Details
Below is a summary of the new features in Oracle Application Express 3.2.

Forms Conversion

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Oracle Application Express 3.2 enables you to load your Oracle Forms source into an Oracle Application Express project and generate an initial APEX application. The conversion automatically converts most user interface components but does not convert business logic implemented within triggers, program units, or PL/SQL libraries. Loading Oracle Forms definitions into the Oracle Application Express project provides analysis and tracking of the conversion project. Once the initial design has been generated, the rapid application development capabilities inherent within Oracle Application Express can be utilized to enhance and expand the generated application. Post-generation the business logic within Oracle Forms can be re-implemented and new screens which take advantage of Web 2.0 capabilities such as interactive reports and flash charts can be added using the wizards built into the Oracle Application Express builder.

To learn more about Forms Conversion please examine this Oracle By Example: Converting Your Oracle Forms Applications to Oracle Application Express 3.2.

Security Enhancements

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Security best practices for developing Web applications specify minimizing the exposed footprint, protecting the integrity of the session state, and ensuring that data being transmitted between the browser and the server cannot be compromised. To align with these best practices, Oracle Application Express, release 3.2 has improved security measures making it more declarative and powerful. Some key enhancements include the ability to:
  • Declaratively encrypt session state
  • Declaratively specify session timeouts for maximum idle time and maximum session duration
  • Create new password item types that enable users to enter passwords without ever saving them to session state.
Other features designed to minimize the exposed footprint include reducing the privileges required by the Oracle Application Express database account, disabling the Database Monitor feature by default, and providing administrators the ability to require HTTPS for the administration and development suite applications. In addition, administrators can now restrict new or updated account passwords to those that have not previously been used for a specified duration and, for new installations, require that service administrator account passwords conform to a strong password policy.

Oracle Application Express documentation has also been improved to provide you with more resources to build secure Web applications. These new features complement existing Oracle Application Express security features including flexible authentication, authorization schemes, URL tampering protection, and so on.


For those interested in viewing the new features from our previous release, read Oracle Application Express 3.1 New Features.