APEX 5: Deprecated and Desupported Features and Changed Behavior

I've started to read APEX 5 BETA documentation (Beta Draft: 2015-01-16) Release Notes and I've found out two interesting chapters -  Deprecated and Desupported Features and Changed Behavior.

In chapter named Deprecated and Desupported Features you can find many interesting things about APEX 5 and what should you avoid to use in your future APEX 5 applications. 

Here are some things that caught my eye more than others:

• Deprecated column types in Classic Report. Oracle recommends to use Tabular Forms or APEX_ITEM API for creating editable reports.
• File Browse Item should use APEX_APPLICATION_TEMP_FILES table for select, update or delete operations instead of WWV_FLOW_FILES. Deletes are no longer necessary, as the file will automatically be purged after the request or when the session is purged.
• If you used WWV_FLOW_FILES as a permanent store, the files should be copied into their own BLOB column(s) within a table within your schema.
• In APEX 5.0 there is only one button type which can be positioned in a region or next to items. Finally, no more Item Buttons! :)
• Dynamic actions based on DOM Objects have been deprecated. You should use jQuery Selector or JavaScript Expression instead.
• Page computations and validations based on SQL expressions have been deprecated. You should use PL/SQL expressions or PL/SQL Function returning VARCHAR2 types
• #PLUGIN_PREFIX# substitution string is not supported any more in plug-in files. You should use relative URLs instead.

Also, there's a nice chapter about Changed Behavior. Here are some nice bullets to remember:

• Static files will be stored in central repository that is available for a specific application (Static Application Files) or for all applications within a workspace (Workspace Application Files)
• Static application files uploaded to Shared Components are automatically included in an application export. No more recreating supporting object scripts. :)
• In a future version of Oracle Application Express, the dictionary view APEX_WORKSPACE_FILES will no longer include CSS, image or static files uploaded in Shared Components. You should use the new views APEX_WORKSPACE_STATIC_FILES and APEX_APPLICATION_STATIC_FILES instead.
• Because of internal changes to the views APEX_APPLICATION_FILES and WWV_FLOW_FILES, it is not possible anymore to lock rows with SELECT FOR UPDATE

Please check the whole documentation for details. Remember, for now this is only BETA documentation. 

Don't forget to check those chapters in full documentation before moving to APEX 5.

APEX 5: jQuery Migration

If you like to write custom JS code in your APEX applications or to use lots of 3^rd party plugins you should be aware of changes in jQuery and JS libraries in APEX 5.

APEX 5 (at least current version 5.0.0.00.28) uses jQuery 2.1.3 and if you plan to migrate from APEX 4.2 you should check for changes from jQuery version 1.7.1 which is included in APEX 4.2. There are some things that are deprecated and removed like .die() or .live() event handlers.

Here you can find things that are removed:

http://api.jquery.com/category/removed/

But APEX development team was one step ahead and they provided us with quick solution to include jQuery Migrate plugin that restores deprecated features and behaviors of jQuery.

You can turn it on under the User Interface Attributes Page, JavaScript tab. My advice is that you should clean up your code and not to use any deprecated code.

Note that, as you can read in jQuery documentation, jQuery 2.x has the same API as jQuery 1.x, but does not support Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8. APEX development team also thought of that and they put conditional comment to handle this:

<!--[if lt IE 9]><script type="text/javascript" src="/i/libraries/jquery/1.11.2/jquery-1.11.2.min.js?v=5.0.0.00.28"></script><![endif]-->

<!--[if gte IE 9]><!--><script type="text/javascript" src="/i/libraries/jquery/2.1.3/jquery-2.1.3.min.js?v=5.0.0.00.28"></script><!--<![endif]-->

Also be aware that by default when you create new application in APEX 5 there is no more old non-namespaced APEX JavaScript functions in your application (as part of legacy.js). You can include them by turning on property Include Legacy Javascript in User Interface Attributes page, JavaScript tab.

Again, don't do that. Rather clean up your code!