Last July, I published a couple of webpages that displayed the end dates for support for three Oracle development tools as a single point of reference. You can find them here:
Since then, some of the dates have changed, and in the case of ORDS, more versions have been released. This blog provides a brief overview of these changes.
Since the support webpages were put live, there have been no new releases of APEX. There was an expectation that, despite Oracle skipping the release of 25.1 in early 2025, a release would occur in 2025. However, that did not happen, and we are still waiting for a new release of APEX. The latest being 24.2, released in January 2025.
As a response, it looks like Oracle have updated the support end dates for all releases back to 23.2. 23.2 was meant to be out of support in November 2025, but support has been extended to May 2026. Support for the later releases, 24.1 and 24.2, has also been extended to December 2026 and July 2027, respectively.
Since 2023, Oracle have been releasing four versions of ORDS regularly every year on a quarterly basis. This means that since the support webpages were released, three new versions of ORDS have been released: 25.2, 25.3 and 25.4. As Oracle keep backwards compatibility as part of the recent versions, these ORDS versions are compatible with older versions of APEX. This means no changes to the support end dates for older versions of ORDS. This has seen versions 24.1 and 24.2 fall out of support, and 24.3 and 24.4 are close to falling out of support, with their end dates remaining March 2026 and June 2026, respectively.
As has been the case over the past few years, there is little movement in releases for Oracle Forms. The last major release was version 14.1, which was released in December 2024. Before that, the last major release was 12.2, which was released in October 2015, nine years prior, with minor releases in 2019 and 2023. With this slow release cycle, extending the support end dates for Forms has been a regular occurrence, and this has continued with version 14.1. The Premier Support and Extended Support have been extended a year to December 2030 and December 2033, respectively.
Hopefully, this update will help in any planning or strategic decisions being made in relation to any of these Oracle development tools. Make sure to review and bookmark the webpages for the Oracle APEX and ORDS support reference, and the Oracle Forms support reference.
If you’d like any advice or assistance with your Oracle APEX upgrade, my team of experienced Development Consultants and I would be happy to help, so please do get in touch to discuss your options.