The history (I know) of APEX

During one of my chats with John Scott, the question popped up how long we were already playing with APEX. I began searching in my archives…

A short overview of how I got in touch with APEX (aka HTMLDB aka Project Marvel).

In 2000 (I was working at Oracle) I saw a demo of an application made in WEB DB. I didn’t play that much with WEB DB, but some of my (ex-)Oracle colleagues really loved it. Nevertheless in some projects around that time I used mod_plsql…

A few years later I saw a powerpoint presentation of “Project Marvel”. From the beginning I thought, “waaaw” this looks very good and promissing. I think it was around February 2003 I got more information about this project. I even found a screenshot in my archives from that time.

In September 2003 I first heard the name HTML DB. That was the first time I really played with it, I think it was v1.3. I still have a zip of version 1.4 ;-)
I think my first message about APEX (HTMLDB) in the OTN forum was on Oct 1, 2003 2:06 AM. Apparently at that time I was working with v1.4: http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=554340
Raj, at that time one of the HTMLDB developers, answered me!

The rest you know, as it was public: HTML DB v1.5 -> v1.6 -> v2 -> APEX.
I also found a pdf describing the history.

To show you the difference, a screenshot of the current APEX version
(but that you know, I suppose)