Hi Juergen, Like you, I am an old hand using APEX. I started with HTMLDB 1.5 beta. You may remember me from other conversations we had and I am big FOEX user, which now will have to come to an end.
Back to standard APEX. Yes, we have FOS and I am not even sure what is going to happen with that. I had requirements that could not be met by APEX and so I ventured into the FOEX world. I am just disappointed that APEX is still not fixing/enhancing the core product and focussing on all these new things like AI etc. I understand that they have to be seen doing the hot buzzword technology bandwagon. I would love to see some of the great capabilities of FOEX find their way into APEX, but I am not holding my breath.
Over the years, like you, I had to fight Oracle Sales on using APEX. Understandable as it is a free product. Yep fighting the projects which would prefer Java and .Net and the never wavering "Excel can do that for me". And migrating the Forms Application to APEX is a nice buzzword until you get into the complex applications and people expect a similar UI. This is where you would like to see improvements in standard APEX which would make this transition a bit easier and have APEX support at least some of the capabilities of FORMS which were there for the last 20+ years.
Please continue with APEX.WORLD. Happy to become a contributing member. There is a lot of value in it. I would like to see that Find Developers is being limited to only people who are truly available as a developer full time, part time and have at least experience. Too many hopefuls or irrelevant people there. If they want to make themselves known to the community create a separate section.
Keep on trucking ;-)
Raymond