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May 4th

Question and Answer

Connor McDonald

Thanks for the question, david.

Asked: January 17, 2017 - 4:37 pm UTC

Last updated: January 18, 2017 - 3:03 am UTC

Version: 11.2

Viewed 1000+ times

You Asked

I have been very intrigued that asktom is an apex app. knowing that it has been brought into apex 5.x, I am wondering if our experts could tell me whether apex has moved forward so much from 4.2.6 that I should chuck all my 4.x-based books and move on up? My work with APEX is still at an early enough growth point that I can work with the changes, but I hate to lose my investment and do an unneeded upgrade without good value for the change.

And perhaps if your answer is yes, you can point to a very good learning non-Oracle learning guide to make the most of it? I am quite happy also to learn from Oracle sources, but I usually look for a variety of inputs to cover perspectives that may not be within the goals of just one or two authors.

and Connor said...

Couple of good posts

1) consolidated list of new features

http://www.inside-oracle-apex.com/oracle-apex-5-0-articles/

2) a 2 min video by the 'owner' of Apex

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6VwOrqDa0Y

The key takeaways from the above (from my perspective) is this:

Apex 5.0 was a developer's release, ie, the *development* environment was totally re-jigged. Hence as a developer, it's a great jump forward. So in terms of your skillset, sooner rather than later would be a smart upgrade.

Apex 5.1 has a new interactive grid, which is like a "tabular form on steroids" :-) I think that's a real game changer for users, since (in my experience) many apex apps are replacements for Excel equivalents...so interactive grid is a great user interface improvement.

I found the following book useful (caveat - I'm no apex developer)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1484204859



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