When an extension is listed as a dependency, it means you can reference any of that extension's resources, like a service connection or Layout, while building your own App UI. It also means that you can configure (customize) the extension's App UIs to meet your own business needs.

Dependencies are listed by pillar in the Designer's Navigator, in a separate section on the App UIs pane. At a minimum, you'll see the Unified Application (which serves as the underpinning to the Oracle Cloud Applications ecosystem) listed here. Depending on how you came to Visual Builder Studio, you may see other extensions listed here as well. For example, here's what you may see when your dependent extension belongs to the Human Capital Management pillar:

Description of the illustration dependnames.png

The People Personal Information extension shown here—which contains the personal-information App UI—is listed as a dependency under the Human Capital Management pillar. This means that you can now open personal-information and tweak any of its pages with extendable artifacts—dynamic tables or forms, dynamic containers, variables, and so on. In addition, you can use the fragments in the extension's Fragments folder in your own App UIs. If a fragment in this folder has at least one artifact marked as extendable, you can customize the fragment for your own use. Your extension has access to everything contained within its dependent extensions.

You may also see several other extensions from the same pillar listed here, for example, Absences, Benefits Common, and so on. That's because all extensions in the same pillar as your dependent extension become available for you to explore. So even though your extension might only depend on resources in People Personal Information, you can explore all extensions in the HCM pillar to locate resources you might want to add to your extension without actually adding them to your extension.

So when might you see an extension/App UI listed as a dependency? If you jumped over from Oracle Cloud Applications by clicking Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio, VB Studio automatically adds the extension/App UI containing the page you were just viewing to the list of dependencies, while also listing all other extensions in the same pillar. (The exception here is when you're working with extensions belonging to the CX or Other pillar. In this case, only dependencies that you've explicitly added are shown. In other words, except for the Unified Application, you won't see any dependent extensions listed when you jump over to Visual Builder Studio while editing a page belonging to CX or Other—until you actually add a dependency.)

If you created a workspace by selecting selecting New Application Extension on the Workspaces page, you're essentially creating an empty extension, which is what you use to create a new App UI or to extend the Unified Application. In this case, you'll only see Unified Application. Once you add a dependency, all extensions belonging to that pillar will be listed under the pillar's name.

To add a dependency for your extension, use the Dependencies pane, where all available dependencies are listed by pillar for easier identification:

Description of the illustration listofdependencies.png

Keep in mind that you add the extension containing the App UI as a dependency, not the App UI itself.

Simply put, you add an extension as a dependency when you want to a) configure an App UI (that is, make changes to it) in the extension, or b) access the resources in the extension, like service connections or Layouts, while building your own App UI. (You'll find these resources listed by pillar on the Services and Layouts pane.)

The Unified Application provides global services and a common user interface shell to all of the App UIs that plug into it, whether created by Oracle or developed at your enterprise. For this reason, it's considered a dependency for everything in the Oracle Cloud Applications ecosystem. You don’t have to worry about this underpinning, but you should know that it, too, is configurable; all you have to do is open the Unified Application and modify it, just as you would any other App UI. Note that the ask-oracle-bo-metadata and ask-oracle-chat fragments, while globally available to all App UIs in your extension, are internal to the Unified Application and cannot be customized or referenced in your extension.