First of all: a happy New Year to all my blog readers! I wish you an exciting 2013 with lots of interesting projects, no budget restraints and no unexpected downtime ;-)
When I returned from the Christmas holidays, I noticed that both Application Express 4.2.1 and the APEX Listener 2.0 have been released!
APEX 4.2.1 is actually the first patch set release for APEX 4.2. You can download the full release here (for new installations or upgrades) or, if you have a support contract, you can download the patch only (with number 14732511) here (for upgrades from version 4.2). There are a lot of bugs that have been fixed with this patch set (check for a full list here), and also some new features have been introduced, for example the inclusion of AnyChart version 6 (which has even more HTML5 support). I’m happy with this patch set release, since this means it’s time to upgrade for us. We had some issues in the past after upgrading to a minor APEX release, so I learned to have patience and wait for the first patch set ;-)
Application Express Listener 2.0 was available as a Early Adaptor version for a while, but now the first production release is available. There are a lot of new features, like the ability to define multiple database connections, and more support for RESTful services. There are now also 2 ways to configure it: using SQL Developer (you need at least version 3.2.2) and using a new command-line interface. The web interface however has been removed, which I find a bit sad because I liked it :( We are using the APEX listener deployed to GlassFish, and I’m not sure if anything has changed in that matter. This is something I need to look into. I also wonder how you would upgrade from a previous version of the APEX Listener to this one. I suppose this involves some redeployment, and so also some (planned) downtime.
Enjoy,
Matthias
Matthias Hoys 