How long will Oracle APEX remain an included feature of the Oracle Database?

Another great question today from an internal employee.  Tom, a Managed Cloud Services Delivery Director, asked:

"I am the OMCS Client Manager for <redacted>.  They are currently a large Discoverer customer who would like to convert to Oracle APEX.  To that goal, they have asked me to find out how long Oracle APEX will continue to be a no-cost feature of the Oracle Database (could be an unanswerable question, I realize)."

Great question!  And my response to Tom:

1. Oracle Application Express has been an included feature of the Oracle Database since 2004.  It remains an included feature of the Oracle Database in 12cR2 and in the foreseeable future.
2. There are no plans to charge separately for Oracle Application Express.  It has *never* been discussed.
3. Application Express is a feature of every Oracle Database Cloud Service (Database Schema Cloud Service, Database Cloud Service, Exadata Express, Exadata Service)
4. In my 21 year career at Oracle, I have never seen a situation where Oracle has included something as part of the database license and then decided later to charge separately for it.  It might have happened, but I'm not aware of it.  I have seen the reverse (where we used to charge a separate license fee, and then eventually included it with the Oracle Database - Oracle Text is a good example).

People often classify APEX as "free".  I call it "an included feature of the Oracle Database." If you're licensed and supported for the Oracle Database, you're licensed and supported for Oracle Application Express.  APEX runs wherever the Oracle Database runs - on premises, your cloud, Oracle Cloud.  We have customers running APEX on a laptop on the free version of the Oracle Database Express Edition (XE), we have customers running APEX on 28-node Oracle RAC clusters, and everything in-between.

If you're interested in learning more about APEX, see A Simple Guide to Oracle Application Express (APEX).

Is there a mailing list for APEX release announcements?

There was an interesting question today from Oracle Support, on behalf of a customer.  They asked:

"The customer would like to know if there is any mailing list or other type of subscription to be notified whenever there is a new or upgrade release of APEX."

And I answered with:

As far as mailing lists, they could always sign up for the Oracle Database Insider Newsletter.  Announcements about Oracle Application Express, SQL Developer, Oracle REST Data Services and many other database-related technologies are typically included in this newsletter.

I can also suggest that your customer:

1. Follow Oracle Application Express on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/orclapex/
2. Join the LinkedIn group:  https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8263065
3. Follow @oracleapexnews on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/oracleapexnews
4. Visit the Web site:  https://otn.oracle.com/apex

The APEX releases and patch sets are always announced through these social media channels.

And let's not forget https://apex.world, which is the clearinghouse of information for everything APEX.

excel2collection functionality of ORDS will not work with APEX 5.1 or later

If you're using the functionality of Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) with Oracle Application Express to parse a Microsoft Excel file and store the parsed results in an APEX collection, I have good news and bad news.

Bad News:  This functionality will no longer work in Application Express 5.1 or later.  Due to architectural changes in the way that pages are submitted in APEX 5.1, this functionality was unfortunately (but necessarily) broken with no practical way to restore it.  And due to other necessary architectural changes, the bundled library which does the Excel parsing in ORDS is being removed in a future version of ORDS.

Good News:  Some customers have reported that they have successfully replaced this functionality using Anton Scheffer's EXCEL2COLLECTIONS plug-in.

We take very seriously our desire to always preserve existing functionality for customers, and to try to always avoid any change in user interface or functionality upon upgrade.  But in this case, it was simply not practical.

Thanks to Denes Kubicek for prominently raising this issue on the OTN discussion forum.