Monday, April 29, 2013

APEX 4.2.2 released

Oracle Application Express (APEX) 4.2.2 is now released, you can read up and download it here, or try it out on http://apex.oracle.com. In addition to fixing some bugs Oracle APEX 4.2.2 includes a major upgrade of all 18 productivity and all 16 database sample applications. You can find these applications by navigating to the application builder from the APEX home page, then clicking the "Packaged Applications" tab.
Clicking on a given app allows you to install the application, if not already installed, or upgrade if the app is already installed from a previous Oracle APEX version.
In terms of highlights Oracle APEX 4.2.2 introduces a new survey builder app that is modern and robust, and a new brookstrut sample application that has a nice mash up with google maps. All productivity and sample apps make greater use of APEX plugin's and have improved in-application documentation. All sample applications have been ported to APEX theme 25 which is our responsive grid layout based theme. Our most popular packaged app P-Track has been enhanced and refined, so if you are a P-Track user you should strongly consider upgrading. Or sample app "Sample Tabular forms" has been renamed Sample Forms and Grid Layout. This sample app includes explanation of how to use Oracle APEX grid layout and is a great application to review for any APEX developer making the leap to grid layout. We hope our Oracle APEX 4.2.2 release will give both novice and advanced Oracle APEX developers ideas and examples both in the context of a real application (e.g. our productivity apps) and in the form of sample applications. Note you can always install a packaged application then unlock it; thus allowing you to see how it was coded. But if you unlock the application it removes the ability to upgrade to new releases.