The World Cup 2018 Challenge is live... An app created 12 years ago to showcase the awesome Oracle APEX

Since 2006 it's a tradition... every two years we launch a site where you can bet on the games of the World Cup (or Euro Cup). This year you find the app at https://www.wc2018challenge.com

You can read more about the history and see how things look like over time, or you can look on this blog at other posts in the different years.

The initial goal of the app was to showcase what you can do with Oracle Application Express (APEX). Many companies have Excel sheets where they keep the scores of the games and keep some kind of ranking for their employees. When I saw in 2006 that Excel sheet, I thought, oh well, I can do this in APEX, and it would give us way more benefits... results straight away, no sending of Excel sheets or merging data, much more attractive design with APEX etc. and from then on this app lives its own life.

Every two years I updated the app with the latest and greatest of Oracle APEX at that time.

Today the site is built in Oracle APEX 18.1 and it showcases some of the new features.
The look and feel is completely upgraded. Instead of a custom theme, the site is now using Universal Theme. You might think, it doesn't look like a typical APEX app, but it is! Just some minimal changes in CSS and a background image makes the difference.

The other big change is the Social Authentication, which is now using the built-in capabilities of APEX 18.1 instead of a custom authentication scheme I used the previous years. You can authenticate with Google, Facebook and with your own email (custom).

Some other changes came with JET charts and some smaller enhancements that came with APEX 5.1 and 18.1.

Some people asked me how certain features were done, so I'll do some separate blog posts about how Universal Theme was adapted on the landing page and how Social Authentication was included and what issues we had along the line. If you wonder how anything else was done, I'm happy to do some more posts to explain.

Finally, I would like to thank a few people who helped to make the site ready for this year: Erik, Eduardo, Miguel, Diego, Galan, and Theo, thanks so much!