Tuesday, 9 August 2011





About the APEX Challenge and future direction


The APEX Challenge was launched by Apex Evangelists on 24th June 2011 as part of the PL/SQL Challenge website. The APEX Challenge is a quiz designed to test APEX developers’ skills and knowledge.


The weekly APEX quiz can be played at http://www.plsqlchallange.com. All you have to do is register and then you can login and play for free.


The number of users participating in the APEX Challenge has been growing week on week since it was first launched, with a range of players of all levels now taking part. The quiz allows you to challenge your colleagues for pride and gain stature within the APEX community through our range of player rankings.


Each month and quarter, prizes will be awarded to the top-ranking players. There is also a quarterly playoff, where participants compete in a ten-question shootout against the other top-ranked players in their category.


I have been part of the development team for the PL/SQL Challenge and APEX Challenge since they were first introduced, initially whilst working with Apex Evangelists on my placement year at university. I graduated in July and became a full-time developer working with John Scott and Dimitri Gielis at Apex Evangelists.

Part of my work is to continue the development of the APEX Challenge as well as writing and reviewing some of the quiz questions.


What we would really like is for the developers who are playing the quiz to submit their own questions; this will give a more diverse range of questions and help us build a large library.

To submit a question, log in to your account and click “Submit Quiz” on the orange navigation bar at the top of the page.



Our aim is for the APEX Challenge to be a great learning experience for our quizzers so here are some of the ideas we have for developing the quiz going forward:


Coming Soon

· Create an APEX application where players can access the answers to each question

· Give read-only application builder access to our past question library so players can access the area where quiz question authors test the questions. This will enable players to see the code behind the questions and test the results.

· Include some questions with screenshots to make the quiz more exciting

· A new APEX welcome page to better promote the APEX quiz


Possible ideas for the future

· Switch to a daily quiz but this would require a much larger question library

· Possibility of a live APEX quiz at an event with a number of APEX developers