2020 threw us all for a bit of a loop, didn’t it??
I feel sorry for the folks who are tasked with end of year review posts. I mean… Where to start?
As for me, I’m excited because I get to spend some time remembering all the great things that happened to our #orclapex community this year: the APEX team pushed out some awesome new releases, the community really came together, some great new products saw the light of day, and lots more.
It really was an exceptional year!
Read on for more, and let me know what I missed!
2 Huge APEX Releases
APEX 20.1 became generally available on April 23rd. Top new features included friendly URLs, Faceted Search enhancements, IG-API, improved application lifecycle management, native PDF printing, and Mega Menus.
APEX 20.2 , released on October 21, 2020, included an all-new Cards component, Automations, Faceted Search enhancements, Report Printing, REST Data Source synchronization, and much more. The flurry of Twitter activity and demos by Patrick Wolf when it first became available on apex.oracle.com resulted in our roundup post: Oracle APEX 20.2 New Features: as seen on Twitter!
Products, plugins, and all sorts of goodies
With the Oracle APEX community growing at what seems to be warp speed, it’s no surprise that the number of plugins, tools and other products that help extend APEX and make developers more efficient has followed suit.
2020 has seen a ton of new plugins, both commercially supported and open source. Our friends at United Codes and FOEX also released a number of products this year, including new plugins, and upgrades to APEX Office Print.
APEX Nitro v5 was released with updates that won’t disappoint!
Flows for APEX was also released in 2020, you won’t want to miss Niels DeBruijn presenting at the December 17th Office Hours. He will also be our guest on the Insum Insider January 15th episode!
APEXcl Cloud version was released back in April, for developers looking to leverage their version control systems with Oracle APEX. Check out our Insider episode here!
New Book Released
Apparently these guys never sleep.
Adrian Png and Luc Demanche released their new book: Getting Started with the Oracle Cloud Free Tier.
This is a must read for anybody looking to get the most out of this great offering from Oracle.
You might also want to check out the Insum Insider episode where they discussed not only the book but the Oracle Cloud Free Tier in general.
14 Oracle APEX Office Hours sessions
Free training, how-tos and Q&A with Oracle APEX experts? Yes please!
These were more frequent in 2020 than 2019. As with all things APEX, the pace is definitely picking up.
With all the great live content available these days, choosing how you spend your time isn’t easy. We get it! And if you haven’t yet checked out the Oracle Application Express Office Hours, don’t fret. Every juicy session, hosted by APEX developers and product managers, is recorded. But we definitely recommend adding a few of these to your calendars. Joining live is a great networking opportunity and allows you to meet the experts, ask and often receive answers to some of your burning questions.
12 newsletters from apex.world
If you’re a member of apex.world, this post will not teach you anything new! It’s your one-stop-shop for all things #orclapex.
They put out 12 great newsletters in 2020. These are not to be missed if you want to keep up to date with all things in the Oracle APEX world.
They highlight key news events, interesting blog posts from the community, and feature the monthly apex.world ‘Member of the Month‘.
Congrats to Insum’s own Vincent Morneau and Adrian Png for being named apex.world members of the month in 2020!
APEX@HOME
There are some moments that are just burned into the collective consciousness. Pivotal moments that make it such that we can always vividly bring them to mind. Our lives suddenly changing in the spring of 2020 is one of those moments, I think.
When the conferences that bring us together started getting cancelled one by one, Martin D’Souza, Adrian Png and Trent Schafer dreamed up the APEX@Home virtual conference, that brought together experts from around the globe in a 24 hour non-stop presentation marathon. Thanks also to Joel Kallman and Bo English-Wiczling who played a huge part in making it happen. Over 4,000 attendees worldwide tuned in over the course of the event.
Event homepage and recordings here.
Women in APEX
In 2019, Monica Godoy launched the Women In APEX website, and continued interviewing awesome women in the #orclapex community. 2020 brought us interviews with Gemma Wood and Sandra Suarez.
We also held a special Insider episode that brought some of us together, and you can watch the recording here. The session was a great opportunity to connect and learn more about one another. It also brought about our new #women_in_apex Slack channel on apex.world. Register and click “Get your Slack invite” to meet and exchange ideas with the brilliant women in APEX!
#APEXHACK20
#APEXHACK20 was the first event of its kind in Latin America. With a focus on Oracle APEX as well as Oracle’s Autonomous Database, it brought together developers from 21 countries in Latin America, through a series of 4 Virtual Sessions that culminated in a Hackathon.
Hosted by Insum, and sponsored by Oracle, this event resulted in 5 projects being presented in our November 19th, 2020 event. These projects were a fantastic testament to the amazing applications that can be created using the low code features of APEX.
Monica Godoy put together a great summary post here.
Video recap of the final event below!
COVID apps
Back in March, Joel Kallman published his ‘Seek where you can help‘ post, inviting those of us in the community to help those in need, “not tomorrow, today“.
Many #orclapex applications cropped up, prompting a new tab on apex.world, the COVID-19 Apps page. Here at Insum, we launched our PPExchange to help match organizations that were seeking Personal Protective Equipment with individuals that were willing to donate them.
The APEX team itself rolled out this application that allows physicians and patients to record the effectiveness of promising COVID-19 drug therapies. You can read more about it in the press release here. There is now an entire team at Oracle, led by Scott Spendolini, that is focusing exclusively on COVID19 applications developed with Oracle APEX.
Check out the cool video Oracle put out this week highlighting some of those initiatives.
Our electronic health records #cloud and public health management applications are being used to help manage and fight COVID-19.
Hear what helping beat the virus means to our team. https://t.co/mNxgPUTUt3 pic.twitter.com/1mKq6OElWR
— Oracle (@Oracle) December 15, 2020
Shows, podcasts, and more
Back in March, it quickly became clear that all the presentations and talks we were so eager to give were simply not going to happen. And the meetups, connecting with friends, peers, colleagues? Nope, nope and nope.
So here at Insum, we thought we’d leverage some of the work we were doing and still find a way to share it with the community. This morphed somewhat into what today we call the Insum Insider.
Back in the spring and summer, we hosted weekly episodes in English, and also ran 4 Spanish Insiders as well as 3 French ones. You could say we were busy! But it was such a pleasure to connect with so many people both during the sessions, in our community forum afterwards, and through the emails we’d exchange.
You can check out the recordings on our YouTube channel, and sign up for our 2021 series here. A HUGE shoutout to all our awesome guests that so generously gave us their time.
We also launched APEX Instant Tips, where Hayden Hudson and Anton Nielsen (or Neeeeeelsen, or NullSign) present a new 5 minute APEX tips every week. Join us!
Martin D’Souza and Juergen hosted another 6 episodes of their Oracle APEX Talkshow. And their most recent guest, Christina Moore, one of the afore mentioned ‘Women of APEX’, launched not one but TWO podcasts. Her newest foray into the world of podcasting, The Soul of an Internet Machine, discusses the launch of a SaaS product written in APEX.
Write a Review for Gartner!
Back in 2019, APEX was recognized as Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms.
Let’s make sure this happens again! You can help Oracle APEX by writing a review for Gartner. And hey, if you wrote one already last year, the process is easy peasy and won’t take but a minute.
And that’s a wrap!
Tell me, did I miss anything?
And as we collectively slam the door on this special year that was 2020, we here at Insum would like to take the opportunity to wish you and your families all the best for the holiday season, and we look forward to connecting with you all in the New Year.
Please stay safe and healthy!
APEXionately yours,
Michelle
