To survive in today’s fast-evolving digital and tech landscape, developers must keep evolving their skill sets and explore new ways of working. Now’s the time for them to break away from traditional coding and embrace new methods of building low-code apps.
The all-new Oracle APEX Application Development has come as a boon for low-code developers. What makes it even more attractive is, this new service is a part of the Oracle Cloud free tier. Oracle has made APEX Service available as a fully-managed cloud service that enables developers to build data-driven enterprise applications easily and in almost no time, as it allows them to make rapid iteration, even while ensuring high productivity. It enables application developers to build and deploy modern, data-driven applications 38X faster than coding, without the need to learn complex web technologies.
The service leverages the two decades-long APEX functionality that’s already been used by 500,000 developers as a browser-based service for creating modern web and mobile apps. However, the new Oracle APEX Application Development scores over the original APEX platform because it’s available as a standalone service that’s compatible with diverse applications.
6 reasons why low-code developers should embrace Oracle APEX for their next development project
One of the key reasons why the new Oracle APEX Application Development has become popular with low-code developers is, they don’t necessarily need to become specialized experts to build modern, beautiful and responsive applications.
Development is child’s play!
Oracle APEX is not just easy to learn, it’s easy to use as well. The rich, browser-based, intuitive interface provided by the Application Builder guides developers through the entire process of creating their apps. Besides, it allows them to add enhanced functionality to these apps with limited coding, thanks to the power-packed components of Oracle APEX.
Good-bye, complexity!
Oracle APEX removes the complexity of developing and deploying incredible applications at all layers simply by reducing the amount of code necessary. So developers can take advantage of a low-code platform that’s simpler, faster, lighter-weight, and even costs lower than the alternatives. APEX is not architected as distributed components, and remote calls to the database are eliminated.
Tried and tested
Developers can utilize Oracle APEX to build a wide range of apps for any industry – be it the simplest app that “webifies” a spreadsheet, or mission-critical apps that are used daily by millions of users. The elegant architecture of Oracle APEX has been used to power thousands of applications around the globe.
Unquestionably secure
In a world of volatile web standards, ever-evolving security standards, and resourceful hackers, Oracle APEX comes as a blessing. Its focus on security ensures that the applications stay protected and remain state-of-the-art. After all, it is designed to build web apps which are highly secure out of the box.
Light-weight and lower-cost
Applications running on Oracle APEX consume far fewer resources than middle-tier applications. Oracle APEX is not just stateless, it’s also serverless, while the runtime application state is stored in tables, allowing connections to be re-used across users. This results in far fewer connections and each connection is far lighter.
Portable
Yet another advantage of Oracle APEX is, low-code developers can run it virtually anywhere and everywhere – be it on the Oracle Cloud, on-premises, or wherever there is an Oracle Database. They can even deploy their Oracle APEX applications across any environment easily.
Low-code developers often spend valuable time and effort in figuring out the technology they are using. This delays the entire development process. Applications built and deployed using the APEX Application Development service have the advantages of high security, scalability, availability and performance offered by Oracle Autonomous Database. This enables developers to focus on solving complex business problems and not worry about the underlying technology.
The Oracle commitment
Andrew Mendelsohn, EVP, DB Server Technologies, Oracle, sums it up beautifully: “Oracle continues to support developer communities and the new APEX service is the latest example, enabling citizen developers, business analysts, and professional developers to rapidly create and deploy beautiful, responsive, data-driven applications with minimal effort. APEX is powerful enough to build the vast majority of business applications…”
Leveraging the power of Big Data
The new Oracle APEX Application Development service is pre-configured with Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) and SQL Developer Web. This allows low-code developers to utilize ORDS to create custom REST APIs against their application data. They can also use SQL Developer Web to compose SQL queries and graphically model data.
Use Cases: How developers and organizations are leveraging Oracle APEX
Opportunistic Apps
Oracle APEX allows developers to easily work with end users and implement changes and enhancement requests, often in real time.
Spreadsheet Replacement
A few clicks is all it takes to transform a spreadsheet into a fully-populated table in Oracle Database, complete with a fully functioning app.
Oracle Forms Modernization
Since both Oracle APEX and Oracle Forms are SQL and PL/SQL based, and both provide declarative development environments, developers can easily transition from Oracle Forms to Oracle APEX.
External Data Sharing
Developers can readily expose and/or consume RESTful Web Services by using APEX and Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS). This allows them to first define a REST end point, and then declaratively build a report, chart, or calendar on top of that data source.
Datamart Reporting
Leveraging APEX and its extensive reporting and data visualization capabilities, developers can easily develop appropriate dashboards for various user communities.
SaaS and EBS Extensions
Developers can use APEX to include data from disparate systems, and not just data from their ERP, to build better dashboards and reports, or more complex business flows.
Summing it up
The new Oracle APEX Application Development is a fully-supported no-cost feature of Oracle Database. Being native to Oracle Database, Oracle APEX gives developers direct access to all of Oracle Database features and capabilities. They can use all of this functionality to build and deploy scalable, secure enterprise apps, with world-class features, that can be deployed anywhere.
