Great news, Oracle APEX 23.1 is now available on apex.oracle.com!

Oracle announced today that they have upgraded the free APEX evaluation service at apex.oracle.comto a pre-production version of Oracle APEX 23.1.

Now we can test the new features of Oracle APEX 23.1!

What's new in Oracle APEX 23.1?

Staffing components

Template Components is a new type of plug-in for creating reusable user interface components with support for custom actions, menus and attributes within Page Designer. These components can be represented independently as regions displaying one or more rows of data, and can also be inside reports as partials of a column.

Automatic PWA notifications

We can easily notify desktop and mobile device users who have opted in to receive automatic notifications.

Modernized object browser

• Easy filtering: We can now view and filter database objects of all types from a single tree. 
• Easier editing: An improved editing experience that makes it easier to continue editing the last object you were viewing and ensures that unsaved changes are never inadvertently lost by displaying a new warning in the navigation.
• Improved performance: We can create common objects more easily from a new landing page and quickly switch between the multiple tabs of an object, for example, between the specification and the body of a package or the columns and data of a table.
• Accessible to all: Object Explorer is now coded according to accessibility guidelines, making it easier to work on database objects with assistive technologies such as screen readers.

Improvements in page processing

We can group a sequence of page processes to offload background processing or simply simplify the maintenance of conditional execution.

REST data source enhancements

• Invoke API for REST sources: The Invoke API process has been extended to support REST data sources, providing a fully declarative REST invocation for page processes and simplifying the mapping of REST source parameters to page elements, SQL expressions, static values and more.
• Discover REST sources with Swagger: APEX now supports REST source discovery based on Swagger/OpenAPI responses. We can create a complete REST data source based on a response, including a data profile, as well as additional metadata such as operations and URLs or other parameters.
• Raw selectors: A new switch element has been added to REST data source profiles to select rows as-is. When enabled, all selectors will be used exactly as specified and APEX will not sanitize row and column selectors when generating the SQL query for JSON parsing.

General Builder Enhancements

APEX Builder has been updated which improves the developer's experience 🙂

• Copy pages from Create application: You can quickly create copies of pages from the current application or other applications directly from the Create Page wizard. The new Create page as copy button available in the Create Page wizard sends you directly to the Copy Page wizard, where you can follow the familiar steps to have a copy of a page in no time.
• Save and run from the Code Editor: We can run pages in Page Designer directly from a code editor dialog box without closing it by using the new Save and run pages in code editors feature.
• Context-sensitive help: Links to documentation resources in APEX Builder applications have been updated to include context and allow documentation to redirect to the appropriate book or chapter, increasing the quality of all documentation links from within APEX Builder.

• Friendly URLs in Builder: APEX Builder was updated to use friendly URLs, paving the way for future PWA enablement in Builder.
• Add-on attribute updates: The element add-on infrastructure has been expanded to support 25 attributes, instead of 15. It is now also possible to define and assign groups for custom attributes, making it easier to group similar add-on attributes together.
• Support for property graphs: Native support for property charts in the 23c database. We can create APEX page components directly in a property chart using SQL queries. We can create shared value lists, automations and search configurations directly in property charts using SQL.
• SQL Developer Web Integration: We can open SQL Developer Web directly from the Builder menu. Compatible with ORDS version 23.1 and must be configured at instance level. For workspaces with 1 associated database schema that is REST enabled, SQL Developer Web will open in a separate tab. Otherwise, developers will be prompted with a modal dialog box with a list of schemas to connect to or enable REST.
• Capture ECID in the web service registry: We can configure external web services by passing the execution context ID for end-to-end tracking.
• Continuity of application: A new application security attribute, Session State Commit, has been added. This controls how changes to session and item values are handled, plus the accompanying commits. These are deferred until the end of application processing for new applications, while older applications have the changes written and committed immediately.

APEX Management Enhancements

• Management summary: We can monitor the status of our instances, workspaces and schemas with daily metrics and trend graphs, available daily in the new APEX Manager Summary. 
• Automatic provisioning restrictions: It is now easier to manage the creation of workspaces in an instance with a new user interface and API that allows us to define and manage a block list of email patterns. 
• New API APEX_APPLICATION_ADMIN: The following has been added APEX_APPLICATION_ADMIN API, allowing developers to programmatically interact with administration jobs.

Improvements to the Universal Theme and user experience

The universal theme has been updated with new integrated template components, an improved region display selector, better page rendering performance and more.

• New staffing components: Universal theme now includes template components for avatar, badge, comments, content row, media list and timeline. Many of these components are intended to replace classic report templates that provided similar design patterns, but are now available as fully declarative template components that are much easier to configure and use.
• Improved icon fidelity: PWA-generated application icons have been updated to apply appropriate masking so that they look appropriate on more platforms and devices.
• Improvements in region display selector: Region display selectors now support the display of region icons next to titles in region display selector tabs and control tab selection on page load with new options to remember the last tab selected. Region display selectors also support APEX_REGION.RESET to reset user or session preference for tab selection.
• Export and Import in Theme Rolle: We can easily download and upload themes directly from the Theme Roller interface from the new Actions menu button.
• Improved rendering performance: Collapsible regions and region display selector regions are painted even faster during page load to reduce flickering.
• Template updates: Hero and Title Bar template updates provide a new position of the Up button. The standard region and report templates have also been updated to include a new alignment template option, allowing additional control over the alignment of Order By items.

Improvements in the Approvals Component

The approvals component now supports due dates for creating approval tasks.

• Expiration date element: El elemento Fecha de vencimiento ahora está disponible como una propiedad para el complemento de proceso Human Task – Create. Cuando se especifica, este valor anulará la configuración de la fecha de vencimiento para la definición de la tarea subyacente.
• Updated task creation API: The APEX_APPROVAL.CREATE_TASK API now includes a due date parameter. When specified, this value will override the due date setting for the underlying task definition.

Additional upgrades and enhancements

• New color selector: The old JET color picker was replaced in APEX Theme Roller, Page Designer and IR/IG Highlights with a new color picker based on web components. This color picker can be created dynamically and has the same settings as the previous color picker with a JET color-compatible object.
• REST-enabled objects: The REST enablement functionality for database objects was removed from the APEX Object Explorer and placed under APEX RESTful Services. Users can now create and modify RESTful services from the RESTful Enabled RESTful Objects page.
• Accessibility improvements: The plain text attributes have been updated to properly escape HTML and ARIA attributes and prevent HTML markup from being exposed to screen readers.
• TinyMCE adopted: The TinyMCE JavaScript library has been added and is now the basis for the rich text editor, as CKEditor has been deprecated.
• JavaScript library updates: They have updated several JavaScript libraries to newer versions, including Oracle JET 14.0.0, FullCalendar 5.11.3, PrismJS 1.29.0, MarkedJS 4.2.5, DOMPurify 2.4.3, CKEditor5 36.0.0, Terser 5.16.1, CSSO 5.0. 5, Cropper.js 1.5.13 and MapLibre 2.4.0.

Finally, Oracle has also announced an exclusive series of 4 parts of Oracle APEX Office Hours focused entirely on the new features of APEX 23.1.

I invite you to try the new features of this new version of Oracle APEX!