Upgrading to APEX 5 on Oracle XE 11g

It’s a Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK.
This is usually a time for doing odd-jobs as a distraction from watching the rain come down.
This time around, rather than subject you to another lament about the Great British Summer ( or lack thereof), I’m going to go through the steps needed to install APEX5 on Oracle 11gXE.

Now, I know that the documentation doesn’t mention Express Edition.
I also know that the instructions that Oracle do have for upgrading APEX on XE haven’t yet been updated to account for APEX5.
I know this because I’ve spent a wet Bank Holiday finding this stuff out the hard way so that (hopefully), you don’t have to.
What I’m going to cover here is :

• Pre-installation checks
• Getting APEX5
• Installation
• Configuration

I would say “let’s get cracking before the sun comes out”, but that would only give us until around the second week in July…