It’s a well known and established fact that one of the only constants in life is change. And it’s very prevalent in the world of technology. It continues to advance, paying little or no heed to the rest of the world. With hardware speeds and abilities evolving at a rate approaching a point where the pyhsical limitations of silicon and room temperature are the remaining boundaries, and software following, taking a bit longer to utilize that power, but it gets there.

It wasn’t that long ago (it seems) that I was asked to look at Oracle APEX and Oracle XE for work, and devise a tutorial for it’s installation and beginner use. It has been almost a year since then, and I find myself revisiting it after my last project. In that short amount of time there have been a few rather large changes. While Oracle XE is still at 10g, where it was originally, the APEX system itself has undergone 2 fairly large updates, going from the 3.0.1 version I originally was working with to, 3.1, and now 3.2 being the current version.

I dig out my old tutorial to find it is now woefully outdated, and in much need of updating itself. I find my old notes, and find my eyebrows arching at the idea of looking if the few quirks I found with the original are still there, or if they have been addressed. Just in a brief once over of the documentation for installation I can see differences in the process, the warnings, and to a lesser extent the requirements for operation.

It should be quite enjoyable seeing and testing to see how smoothly installing the new version is, and if the upgrade process is smooth or contains bumps in the road. Upgrading from 3.0.1 to 3.2 is supposed to be smooth, but we shall test and see for ourselves.

After all, if I can’t change with the times, the times won’t stop changing for me.