The end of the year always feels like it’s flying by, packed to the brim with holidays and family gatherings. Amidst the chaos, I always like to take a step back to reflect.
This year was full of great things in our Oracle APEX community, and I thought I’d share my roundup of Oracle APEX in 2019.
11 newsletters from apex.world
apex.world put out 11 great newsletters in 2019. These are not to be missed if you want to keep up to date with all things in the Oracle APEX world.
They highlight key news events, interesting blog posts from the community, and feature the monthly apex.world ‘Member of the Month‘.
Psst! 2 Laureston peeps were featured in 2019, yours truly as well as the amazing Jaydip Bosamiya. Be sure to check out his helpful blog for some nifty tips and tricks.
11 Oracle APEX Office Hours sessions
If you haven’t yet checked out the Oracle Application Express Office Hours, don’t fret. Every juicy session, hosted by APEX developers and product managers, is recorded, so you don’t have to worry about having missed them.
Joining live, however, is a great networking opportunity and allows you to meet the experts, ask and often receive answers to some of your burning questions. Check out the topics covered in 2019!
APEX Recognized as Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms
Of course it’s our platform of choice, but how great was it to see Oracle APEX named as Customers’ Choice by Gartner Peer Insights?
This was seen as recognition for our global Oracle APEX community! Oracle APEX received a rating of 4.7 out of 5 for the Enterprise Low-Code Application Platform market, based on 98 published reviews across 13 different industries as of November 20.
To learn more about what this means, read the Oracle announcement here.
Women in APEX site launched
Mónica Godoy launched the Women in APEX site. This was so nice to see, and I really look forward to seeing more great interviews.
Hey girlfriends, I know you’re out there. It isn’t always easy to show up in this (let’s face it, predominantly male) environment, so let’s do all we can to make sure we connect and support each other. I want to meet more of you in 2020!
Adrian Png created the APEX Challenge Coin
This had to be one of the nicest things in our community in 2019. I wonder if Adrian knew what it would mean to all of us when he launched his APEX Challenge Coin back in February?? How great was it to see people proudly receiving their coins throughout the year. And giving the coins to people we felt were deserving of recognition was an equally wonderful feeling.
I think this did so much for our community, and want to thank him for all the time and effort this must have taken. Thank you so much, Adrian!!
APEX Now podcast launched
Bruce Clark launched the APEX Now podcast back in April, and released an impressive 22 episodes in 2019.
These episodes are always a great recap of not only Oracle APEX news, but Oracle news in general. He highlights some of his favorite APEX related blog posts, and often invites a guest for an interview.
If you listen to any of the episodes, I am sure you’ll agree Bruce’s voice was made for podcasting!
Be sure to catch past and future episodes wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Exciting announcements from Oracle
In June, Oracle announced the availability of APEX, ORDS and SQL Developer Web on Autonomous Database Dedicated Deployment.
When low code meets autonomous, great things are bound to happen!
This was followed quite closely, in September, by the announcement of the Oracle Cloud Always Free Tier.
This, of course, means that anybody wishing to take advantage of the low code platform we all know and love no longer has to worry about cost being a barrier. No more excuses, people!
Many experts in the community published helpful posts about getting started, but Dimitri’s series about getting started on the Always Free Tier of the Oracle Cloud is certainly the most comprehensive, and one you won’t want to miss.
Milestones
APEX celebrated it’s 20th birthday in August
Mike Hichwa told us that the first line of APEX code was written on August 4th, 1999.
Hey APEX, you may no longer be a teenager, but you’re still too young to drink in some parts of the world!
“At 20, everything is possible and tomorrow looks friendly.”
Jim Bishop
apex.world hit 5,000 users in November
apex.world is THE place to go for all things Oracle Application Express. Congratulations on this milestone, apex.world team!
2 Huge APEX Releases
Oracle released APEX 19.1 in March, which brought us REST-enabled Forms, a new Form component, easy Data Loading, Dark Mode, JET Chart enhancements, REST Enabled Database Objects, and Interactive Grid enhancements. Read more about this release here.
They then released 19.2 just this past November, which brought us Faceted Search, improved Popup LOV, enhancements to shared LOVs, REST-enabled Interactive Grids, new Team Development functionality, Data Loading into Existing Tables, Dark Mode Theme Style and more. Read more about this release here.
Thank you, APEX team, for these great releases that keep making our jobs easier. Thanks to you, we look like rock stars!
Insum releases APEXcl
Version controlling Oracle APEX applications has often been a challenge. This year, Oracle APEX experts Insum Solutions released APEXcl, a tool that generates APEX output files compatible with version control systems.
Having seen a demo of it myself, I highly recommend you check it out. It is extremely affordable, easy to use, and you’ll be amazed at what it can do for you.
AOP (APEX Office Print) releases version 19.3
The gold standard in Oracle APEX printing, AOP came out with a few releases chock full of new features this year. I am not sure how they manage to keep up with the APEX team, but their latest release fully supports the new faceted search, includes new Maps & Directions features, and lots more.
See the full AOP (APEX Office Print) release note history here.
fabe, the climate emergency app, was released
An all-volunteer team of developers and contributors that I am proud to be a member of, worked tirelessly to develop and release the first version of fabe, an app designed to empower people to change their lives, in order to not only fight climate change, but also help stop human-caused extinctions.
Our expert team of developers have done some extremely innovative things with Oracle APEX in this first iteration. So much so that DOAG awarded fabe a prestigious prize at their most recent conference.
The next major release in 2020 of our climate emergency app will include lots of new features that we believe will encourage people take the action they need to in order to help save lives and fight climate change.
8 major conferences featuring APEX
Nothing beats attending a technical conference to boost your knowledge, skills and help build your network.
This year, no fewer than 8 international conferences featured Oracle APEX.
It isn’t always easy to find the time (and money!) to attend these conferences, but do look into them if you can. Many live stream some sessions, or provide access to speaker slides.
Also, if you’ve ever been on the fence about an ODTUG membership, it’s worth noting that the small annual fee comes with a HUGE benefit: access to all presentations from past KScope conferences. This alone makes the membership priceless.
For a complete list of community events and conferences, visit https://apex.oracle.com/en/community/events/.
I’ve tried to pull together as many of the year’s pieces of news I could find and/or recall. Please do let me know if I missed anything worth mentioning!
The year’s end means the beginning of a new one with new possibilities.
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.
Neil Gaiman
I’m personally very much looking forward to some exciting things happening in 2020, and wish to take this opportunity to wish all of you, my friends in #orclapex community, all the best for the happiest and healthiest of New Years. See you in 2020!
APEXionately yours,
Michelle
