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.
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