Oracle updates free web RAD tool

If you have to knock up a web front-end to an Oracle database in a hurry, you might appreciate the newly-released version 4 of Oracle Application Express – or APEX, as it's known to its mates. Version 4 has been a while coming – it's been in preview since December and the last version, 3.2, came out in March last year. …

[Anonymous Coward]

Fantastic tool...

...if used correctly!

The only thing is it will quickly turn into Sharepoint with every sod in your company quickly developing 6,000 apps, all with one page and only one purpose and then leaving a mess to deal with come upgrade time!!!

[Juillen 1]

Excellent tool..

Just requires management.. All 'developers' of our APEX pages create apps on a dev box behind a firewall. The packages are then shipped out by DBA (or sometimes some of the helpdesk staff who've been trained in it).

Now I can see a big job coming up to migrate the APEX 3 to APEX4.

[Doug Reed]

Ah yes but...

Not really free, it does requre an Oracle database behind it and that involves parting with large wads of money to that great egotistical megalomaniac Larry.

[Gareth Stephens]

Actually it can be free...

Granted you'll have to use Oracle XE but that is free to use and deploy and I would have thought is upgradable to v4 (it upgrades to 3.2 just fine). With that come some restrictions (e.g. 1 CPU/core will be used, 4GB of user data and only 1GB of RAM will be used).

But provided you can live with those limits its a great way into Oracle and provides you with a path to upgrade to full fat Oracle in future if you need.