Just in time for the holidays (you have to figure your own way to wrap it and put it under the tree), we’ve released APEX 5.1. This is a fairly significant upgrade, and includes the long-promised Interactive Grid feature. I’m sure there will be many bloggers exploring this feature and posting about how to get the most out of it in the coming weeks; I highly recommend checking out the Sample Interactive Grid packaged application, as it is packed with demonstrations built by the development team itself.

Many of the packaged apps received significant updates in this release, especially P-Track and Customer Tracker, which were largely enhanced based on feedback we received from users within Oracle. If you’re using a packaged app (or have looked at them and decided against using them!), and have feedback on how they can be improved, please let me know.

One new packaged app that I’m very excited about is Quick SQL. This app is based on the LiveSQL application, and is designed to expedite the creation of DDL for tables. As an example, consider this block of text:

dept
  deptno num(2)
  dname vc14
  loc vc13

emp
  empno num(4)
  ename vc10
  job vc9
  mgr_id /fk emp
  hiredate
  sal num(7,2)
  comm num(7,2)
  dept_id

# settings = { prefix: "dg_", PK: "TRIG", auditCols: true, DB: "11g", hist: true, APEX: true }

This doesn’t look like much–other than the last line, it’s very short to type–but it will generate the DDL to create a slightly improved version of the standard DEPT and EMP tables, complete with triggers, cascading foreign key constraints, and a history table for auditing. (All told, the generated code is 349 lines long!) And the last line–the settings–is auto-generated within the application by selecting your preferences. It takes a little bit to get used to the syntax, and some fancier DDL still isn’t supported, but it’s a great way to build out the initial table structure for your applications.