Friday, June 07, 2013

The Winds of Change....for Oracle Application Express 5.0

A few changes are planned for Oracle Application Express 5.0.

Beginning with Oracle Application Express 5.0, the minimum database version for Oracle Application Express will be Oracle Database 11.1.0.7.  Extended Support for Oracle Database 11.1.0.7 ends in August 2015, per the Lifetime Support Policy, and while only roughly 10% of our APEX customers are still using Oracle Database 11.1, this is still considered a supported product for those customers on Extended Support.

Also beginning with Oracle Application Express 5.0, running APEX-built applications using Internet Explorer 6 will no longer be supported.  This was primarily precipitated by the inclusion of jQuery UI 1.10.3 in Oracle Application Express 5.0, but quite honestly, the rest of the world is moving on, and so must Oracle Application Express.

We are also considering dropping support for Internet Explorer 7 to develop applications in the Application Builder, but this is still being evaluated and no final determination has been made.  Feel free to sound off if you believe this would cause you or your customers any significant pain.

19 comments:

Peter Raganitsch said...

Good News,

please drop support for IE 6/7/8 for development AND production.

Maybe that creates enough pain for our customers to finally upgrade to state-of-the-art web browsers.

Joni Vandenberghe said...

I can't imagine a customer still using IE6/7 but there are plenty that still use IE8, so as much as I dislike the browser, as a developer I still need to support IE8 for production. Development I can choose but production I'm afraid I can't.

Byte64 said...

Hi Joel,
I'd love to know which features of 11g are becoming essential for Apex to run.
I mean, I am interested in the technical reasons, not the commercial ones.
I must say that apart from a few fixes in the XML area and the new PIVOT function in SQL, I don't see many other reasons to upgrade from 10gR2, but I do understand that sooner or later we need to move on.

Thank you.
Flavio

Jason D. Aughenbaugh said...

I like the move but know that there are likely more people still using IE6 and 10g than we suspect. I know a significant portion of my current company is still using IE6/7 and all but one of our DBs is 10.2. Luckily, my APEX server is the one on 11.2

Wesley said...

You can drop IE7 but NOT IE8.

SydOracle said...

We're using IE8 but with compatibility set to IE7.

For Build we can use Chrome.G

Unknown said...

Developing on Firefox/Chrome. Production is on IE8.

Unknown said...

Just to give some info: You can use Google Chrome Frame plugin for IE6/7/8 then it should solve the problem.

Joel R. Kallman said...

Hi Flavio,

The minimum database version is primarily being driven by the support dates of the database versions. However, don't be surprised if APEX 5.0 won't even install in DB 10.2.

Joel

P.S. We would like to make greater use of the PL/SQL function result cache.

Rakesh said...

Please drop IE6/7.


This might sound cliche, but by what time can we expect this version to be available.

Joel R. Kallman said...

"Unknown",

You can expect this to be available in CY2014.

Joel

Sergei Martens said...

Has there been made a decision yet which version of JQuery Mobile will be integrated in Apex 5.0?

Joel R. Kallman said...

Sergei,

No decision has been made.

Joel

og said...

Please drop IE 6/7/8... I need more HTML5/CSS3... :)

New jQuery is great!!! Good Job...

Matthias said...

I'm not in favour of dropping support for Oracle 10gR2. While I understand that 12c is coming out soon, 10g is still an excellent database for small to medium sized companies. I guess the upgrade business must continue...

Unknown said...

Great news, please feel free to drop support for IE 6/7. It is just not worth the effort supporting these browsers anymore.

Unknown said...

Drop ie6/7/8 support.
How can one seriously develop web applications on those ancient horrible browsers?

Naveen Wason said...

Good News, But when Oracle Application Express 5.0 will be available for developing applications

Joel R. Kallman said...

Naveen,

APEX 5.0 should come out sometime in CY2014.

Joel