Oracle APEX Gets Web 2.0 Boost

From PC World: Oracle has upgraded its Oracle Application Express development software so that it will allow developers to add some Web 2.0 flash to their applications.

"By far, this is the most significant release to date. It has more features and pushes the platform much farther than previous releases," said Mike Hichwa, an Oracle vice president of software development.

This new iteration, version 4, features a new tool called Dynamic Actions, which is a library of AJAX functionality that can be added to a Web application through a browser-based Wizard interface. With these features, developers can make their Web pages more interactive by using AJAX-powered bits to do things like hide or show elements or offer type-ahead suggestions.

The upgrade also features a wizard to communicate with REST (representational state transfer) data sources from within an application. "This is great for creating portals or dashboards," Hichwa said.

The package includes 20 new themes to applications a modern look and feel. Oracle designed these themes with XHTML (Extensible HTML) and CSS (cascading style sheets) standards, so they should render more uniformly across different browsers, Hichwa said.

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