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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 further information, see
"Managing Application Security" on page 13-1.
Highlights of Oracle Application Express Release 3.1
New features in Oracle Application Express, release 3.1 include:
■ Interactive Reporting Region.
Interactive Reporting Regions enable end users to customize reports. Users can
alter the layout of report data by choosing the columns they are interested in,
applying filters, highlighting, and sorting. They can also define breaks,
aggregations, different charts, and their own computations. Users can create
multiple variations of the report and save them as named reports and download to
various file formats including comma-delimited file (CSV) format, Microsoft Excel
(XLS) format, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), and Microsoft Word Rich
Text Format (RTF). See
"Editing Interactive Reports" on page 7-15.
For step-by-step instructions on building an example application that uses
interactive reports, see "How to Build and Deploy an Issue Tracking Application"
in Oracle Application Express Advanced Tutorials.
■ Optional Runtime-Only Installation.
For testing and production instances, Oracle Application Express, release 3.1
supports the ability to install just a runtime version of Oracle Application Express.
This minimizes the installed footprint and privileges. Scripts are also provided to
remove or add the developer interface from an existing instance. This new feature
improves application security since in a runtime instance developers cannot
advertently update a production application. See "Managing a Runtime
Environment" in Oracle Application Express Administration Guide.
■ Custom Themes.
In addition to the default themes provided with Oracle Application Express, you
can create your own customized themes. customized themes enable 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. Two new standard themes have
also been added. See
"Managing Themes" on page 10-1 and "Managing Themes for
an Oracle Application Express Instance" in Oracle Application Express
Administration Guide.
■ Documented JavaScript libraries.
Oracle Application Express, release 3.1 includes the ability to suppress standard
JavaScript and CSS files. All included JavaScript files are now compressed to
improve page load time. This release also includes an improved framework for
advanced Oracle Application Express developers to build and leverage custom
Web 2.0 capabilities, improving performance and enabling developers to create
more dynamic application widgets. See "JavaScript APIs" in Oracle Application
Express API Reference.
■ Improved Security.