You probably noticed that the long-awaited APEX 5.0 is out with a much improved page designer, a new cool theme and many other improvements.
At the same time, Oracle also updated the APEX statement of direction. In it, Oracle reiterates its commitment to APEX, saying:
Oracle Application Express will be included with each new version of the Oracle Database as a standard database component.
That should settle the question of whether APEX is here to stay ;-)
Interestingly, Oracle also outlines some of the APEX 5.1 features in the statement of direction:
- A new Multi-Row Edit Region Type (seems to allow you to update rows in several regions)
- Master/Detail/Detail pages (an important improvement that will make it much easier to migrate existing Oracle Forms applications onto APEX)
- Improved packaged application framework (maybe we can get a real APEX app store going?)