APE 22.3 is now available for download

With APEX Project Eye (APE) 22.3, we are introducing a new monitoring framework titled “APE Watchtower.”

New Features

APE Watchtower

• This monitoring framework allows you to prepare custom sensors based on simple SQL statements and assign them to a scan schedule. Write sensors to keep track of your applications, database, external services, and business processes.
• Set up escalation rules and methods to be notified if measurements exceed expected limits. Use your own procedures to add new ways of escalation.
• Transfer the sensors between environments in JSON format.
• Tailor the dashboard to fit your needs.
• Use the new APE Inbox to manage notifications.
• Start with the preloaded set of sensors and add your own.

Improvements

Quality Assurance

• The UNITED CODES Way of working Quality Standard is enhanced and extended with new rules.
• Access control has been extended with two new roles, "QA Manager" and "QA User," to distinguish users based on their privileges and responsibilities.

Bug Fixes

Quality assurance

• Fixed a few SQL statements in the default UNITED CODES Way of Working Quality Standards.

Known issues/limitations

32K limit in Interactive report for the translation manager: If many languages are selected and a long string is to be translated, it might happen that the 32K limitation in the native APEX procedure that renders the Interactive report is hit, producing a "PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small" error

Privileges needed for the translation manager: The translations manager requires the users to grant SELECT privileges to some APEX internal tables. We are aware this can present an issue to some users and are working hard to ensure that grants will not be needed for future releases.

XLIFF manager not supported on the autonomous database: Because of the reasons above, the translation manager is currently not available if the APEX instance is installed on the Autonomous Database server. We are working hard to enable this module in future releases.

Advanced QA rules limitations: The advanced rules which assess your application SQL and PL/SQL rules do not work correctly in case of public synonyms in other database schemas.

APE 22.2.1 is now available for download.

This release contains minor fixes for the APE 22.2 release.

Fixes

• Issues for 12c databases and older
  • Error 1: ORA-00972: identifier is too long
  • Error 2: ORA-40484: invalid data type for JSON_TABLE column

APE 22.2 is now available for download

With APEX Project EYE (APE) 22.2, we have added new features to the Quality Assurance module and Translations Management module.  Activity reporting has also been improved.

New features

• Real-time quality assessments
  • Install QA components directly into your application to have real-time Quality Assessments while you build your applications. You can tailor the behavior of the feature with various settings to maximize your development experience.
• Quality assurance rule builder
  • Use the new rule builder to build your quality assurance rules declaratively. You can even choose existing components in your application from which rules are generated to ensure consistency among components of the same type
• Quality assessment scheduler
  • Schedule quality assessments to run overnight and inspect how the quality of your application is improving daily

Improvements

Quality Assurance

• We've enhanced the look and feel of the Quality Assurance Module. Once an assessment is executed, the user is presented with a progress bar indicating the status of the assessment.
• More printout options. This release comes with a standard Assessment Details Report where users can preselect the details they want to have in their report or upload and generate documents with a custom template.
• A new summary page is added to provide additional insight into your quality assessment results and provide export options
• A new log overview is added to help monitor the duration of each rule inside a single assessment
• New component types have been added.
• An option to purge all assessment history is added.
• A new preloaded UNITED CODES Way of working Quality Standard is available with over 40 rules so you can immediately assess your applications. The rules are split into a basic standard and advanced standard which include rules which help you assess the validity and security of your SQL and PL/SQL code.
• Other minor UI improvements

Translations management

• Manage your translations by integrating with DeepL and automatically translating your application

Workspace and application dashboard

• New application and page overview allows you to sort and inspect your applications or pages easier by sorting on aggregated and calculated data.

Various

•  New regions on the page overview: Activity by user, activity by saved interactive report, and activity by request type.

Bug Fixes

Quality assurance

• Removed bug which caused a unique key constraint violation if a rule was included in two different standards
• Removed bug causing the QA Standard import to fail in specific use cases

Known issues/limitations

32K limit in Interactive report for the translation manager: If many languages are selected and a long string is to be translated, it might happen that the 32K limitation in the native APEX procedure that renders the Interactive report is hit, producing a "PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small" error

Privileges needed for the translation manager: The translations manager requires the users to grant SELECT privileges to some APEX internal tables. We are aware this can present an issue to some users and are working hard to ensure that grants will not be needed for future releases.

XLIFF manager not supported on the autonomous database: Because of the reasons above, the translation manager is currently not available if the APEX instance is installed on the Autonomous Database server. We are working hard to enable this module in future releases.

Advanced QA rules limitations: The advanced rules which assess your application SQL and PL/SQL rules do not work correctly in case of public synonyms in other database schemas.

APE 22.1 is now available for download

New features

• The first version of the Quality Assurance module
  • Define your APEX and DB Quality rules, group them in Quality Standards or use the preloaded content
  • Transfer Quality Standards between different instances
  • Run Assessments on multiple workspaces, applications, page groups, or pages
  • Review issues identified by rule, APEX component, or severity
  • Manage exceptions
  • Use the quick fix link to navigate directly to the component in the APEX Application Builder and resolve the issue
  • Try the preloaded Quality Standards prepared by the UNITED CODES team

Improvements

Translations management

• Export only strings that have not yet been translated
• Update all occurrences of the same string/text message simultaneously
• Excluded translation strings are not shown in the summary overview anymore

Various

• A new page/user matrix report was added to the application dashboard
• Option to exclude public sessions in the activity reports. With this, overall application stability is improved on high volume systems
• Option to change scheduler job intervals through the application settings

Fixes

• Activity reports
  • Database object summary report aligns on the instance and the workspace dashboard
  • Fixed the behavior of the "Hide expired sessions" filter on the error report
  • Fixed an issue in the workspace dashboard which caused the database objects to not be displayed in some cases
• Object dependency calculations
  • Chart regions are now correctly included in the object dependency reports
• APE Projects
  • Fixed issue when deleting or updating applications on projects

Known issues/limitations

32K limit in Interactive report for the translation manager: If many languages are selected and a long string is to be translated, it might happen that the 32K limitation in the native APEX procedure that renders the Interactive report is hit, producing a "PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small" error

Privileges needed for the translation manager: The translations manager requires the users to grant SELECT privileges to some APEX internal tables. We are aware this can present an issue to some users and are working hard to ensure that grants will not be needed for future releases.

Translation manager not supported on autonomous database Because of the reasons above the translation manager is currently not available if the APEX instance is installed on the Autonomous Database server. We are working hard to enable this module in future releases.

APE 21.2 is now available for download

Overview

• APEX Project Eye (APE) 21.2 includes the new translations manager to help you handle XLIFF files to translate your application.
• Some bug fixes and minor improvements for the user interface are also included in this release.

New features

Translation Manager

• Exclude translation strings you don't want to have included in your XLIFF files like queries, substitution strings, or JavaScript code.
• An overview of translation status per language is available in a pivoted report
• Quickly edit translations manually with a convenient HTML preview
• Add statuses and comments to translation strings
• Export multiple XLIFF files at once

Improvements

• Required filters on multiple pages to prevent long loading times on larger applications
• Default docx template improved: Hide empty sections, smaller margins, overall improvements to the look and feel

Fixes

• Solved issue with unhandled characters in the PL/SQL section of the documentation
• Minor bug fixes

Known issues

• 32K limit in Interactive report: If many languages are selected and a long string is to be translated, it might happen that the 32K limitation in the native APEX procedure that renders the Interactive report is hit, producing a "PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small" error
• Privileges needed for the translation manager: The translations manager requires the users to grant SELECT privileges to some APEX internal tables. We are aware this can present an issue to some users and are working hard to ensure that grants will not be needed for future releases.
• Translation manager not supported on autonomous database Because of the reasons above the translation manager is currently not available if the APEX instance is installed on the Autonomous Database server. We are working hard to enable this module in future releases.

Fixed a small issue in ape_utils package when installed in Oracle Database 12.x.

APE 21.1 is now available for download

Overview

• APE 21.1 includes new features that add value to your work, such as the support of PLDOC comment format in documentation generation and the management and debugging tools for application users.
• Improvements have been made to the management of data, with a new lifetime parameter for your activity and access logs.
• Includes many bug fixes and minor improvements for the user interface.

New features

• PL/SQL Documentation generation: The biggest feature in this release is the additional support for PLDOC comment format in documentation generation. APE now supports document generation and printing on the fly for PL/SQL code, commented using PLDOC coding format. A new sample package has been included to demonstrate all of the supported features.
• Custom AOP Templates: the support of custom AOP templates has been introduced in this version. Sample templates are provided, so adapting your documentation to your company's look and feel is easier than ever.
• User management and debugging: A new users tab has been added to the application dashboard. This feature provides insight into:
  • End users using the application and allows you to remotely debug sessions, manage user data, or reset passwords (while using the APEX native authentication mechanism).
  • Workspace users with an activity report and more.
• Email queue and Email log report: Two new reports have been added at the Instance, Workspace and application levels. Now checking your mail queue or mail log is easier from one central point.
• Database object summary report: A report summarizing objects in the database and a full object report have been added. These allow you to check for invalid objects and compile them.
• Table report: A report which displays the top 10 tables by size and full tables report have been added. This includes an option to gather schema statistics to improve your DB performance.
• Application / User Activity Matrix: A report showing the last activity per user, per application has been added. This report allows you to quickly identify inactive applications or users.

Improvements

• Documentation page look and feel: The design of the documentation tab has been adapted to be more readable and attractive. Code highlighting is now available for your procedural code, making it easier to understand.
• Data lifetime parameter: At an application level in a project it is now possible to define the lifetime of data in days. Access and activity data will be purged as per this lifetime. Leave empty to keep your data forever.
• Hide/Show internal workspaces parameter A new parameter was created to allow users to show or display the internal APEX workspaces.
• Link to session id from error report: The error report now includes a link to the session flow diagram, allowing you to quickly replay a session to better understand application errors.
• External JS libraries were updated to the latest versions, bringing a huge improvement to diagram load speed.

Fixes

• Date to default value to today: Default Date to value is now set to today instead of yesterday.
• Dependency calculation fails when no page 1 in application: Dependency calculation process failed as an APEX session was not created if an application did not have a page 1. This has been fixed in this release.
• Multiple schemas linked to a workspace issue: Only one schema was shown when an application had more than one schema assigned to it.
• Logo attributes not valid in applications: A column was removed from the APEX data dictionary view and causes a report to fail to render.
• Minor bug fixes

Known issues

• Dependency calculation fails without the "GRANT CREATE FUNCTION" on the user where APE is deployed. Beware when the user was created manually and not using the APEX Workspace creation wizard.

APE 20.1.3 is now available for download.

Improvements

• Multi-project assignment: A single application can now be assigned to multiple projects, allowing you to monitor an application from within different logical groups.
• Application Name in live preview: Live preview is now displaying the application being edited in application builder.

Fixes

• Session Flow/Same cookie applications: Applications sharing session cookie was previously not displayed correctly on session flow. They are now different by color. A legend was added on the filter pane.
• Replay Session: On the session flow section, the sequence is no longer used to group requests within the same page. Performance improved and CPU usage fix affecting Oracle RAC instances.
• Hidden project name: Project name was not displayed in the breadcrumb when accessed via the Top Applications & Overall Statistics report.  This has now been fixed.
• Minor bug fixes (e.g. Session Flow not showing when no login specified, aligning of objects)

APE 20.1.2 is now available and includes Session Replay!

Fixed an issue with manual registration.

AOP 20.1.1 is now available.

Updated the supporting objects to accommodate older database versions.

AOP 20.1 released: Initial Release.