The new version of Oracle Visual Builder rolls out this month. Known as version 2204, the new version provides a host of new capabilities for application developers.
This version also brings features that rolled out in Visual Builder Studio 2201 (such as Fragments and Data Palette) to the designer in the standalone Visual Builder and Oracle Integration instances.
Here are the key new capabilities you'll find in your environment:
Create Business Objects on Existing Tables & Views
If you have an existing Oracle database with data in it that you would like to expose through Visual Builder apps, you can now leverage Visual Builder's Business Objects (BO) to expose the existing tables (and views) through REST services. To enable this functionality – set your Visual Builder instance to leverage an external Oracle database instead of the one coming with the VB server. Then you can set the properties of a new application to specify that it will map to an existing schema in your database. When you create a business object, you'll be prompted to pick an existing table to base the business object on.
The ability to define a BO on top of a view lets you leverage the full power for SQL functions on your data to get views that include aggregations, distinct values, and much more.
New Responsive Redwood Template
Redwood is the new user experience that characterize modern apps that Oracle develops. Redwood implements best practices developed by Oracle's design team. In the new Visual Builder version when you create a new web application – we let you choose a navigation pattern and create new pages based on Redwood designs. The app templates are responsive and adjust to various screen sizes. The page templates are implemented using fragments, making it easy for you to customize the layout to match your needs.
Alternative Primary Key for Business Objects
When you create a business object by importing a CSV or Excel file of data, you can now specify that one of the existing fields in the data set will be used as the primary key (instead of the id field that VB can generate). This has been a frequently requested feature for developers who import data into business objects from external systems and wanted to keep using the key field used in the external systems inside VB to identify rows.
REST Services Server Variables
We now allow you to specify parameter in the service server path definition that can be changed dynamically at runtime. For example, you could use https://{myserver}/{version}/{lang} and the myserver parameters would then show up in your server configuration and you'll be able to set it's value (and provide a set of valid values).
JavaScript Coding Enhancements
The JavaScript editor now helps you create common JavaScript structure with code insight. For example, typing for will show up various for loops structure in the code insight, and choosing a structure will let you then easily switch the variables in this structure. In addition, we now automatically create functions with the ES6 syntax which is shorter and cleaner.
Action Chain Tests Execute in Background
One of the powerful features of Visual Builder is the ability to define tests cases for declarative action chains. This helps ensure that application logic acheives the required results and promotes test driven development usage. With the new version of Visual Builder, tests automatically execute if a change was done to the action chain they are connected to. This will happen in the background after several seconds of inactivity in the design time (or when you press the run test button). This means that you'll get notified about breakage in your code earlier allowing you to fix it faster.
Enhancements to Dynamic Components
The Oracle JET Dynamic Components are now an integral part of Visual Builder component palette. In addition, we added various capabilities to the development experience with the components. For example, you can preview the various layout of the components in the design view, and the list of fields in the rule builder is divided based on their type. Another new capability is the ability to use page fragments inside dynamic containers.
Custom Page for Locked Apps
You can now upload an HTML page to your app that will be shown to end users when your app is in a locked state letting you control the messaging and info they get.
Learn More
There are various other new features available with the new release. We recommend reading our what's new doc to learn more about these and other features. Don't forget to join our office hours to see demos of the new features, and follow our blog for entries with deeper details and examples on using these features.