Why Oracle APEX customers are opting for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)

July 19, 2021

Build enterprise apps 20x faster with 100x less code with Oracle APEX, now powered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with an aggressive pricing.

A powerful low-code development platform, Oracle Application Express (APEX) empowers customers to build secure and scalable enterprise applications, packed with robust features, that can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud.

By utilizing Oracle APEX on Oracle Cloud, developers can rapidly create and launch engaging applications that provide tangible benefits and immediate value. With APEX, customers don’t have to be proficient in a wide range of technologies to deliver complex solutions. Simply focus on problem-solving, and APEX will handle the technical details.

31.1% CAGR

Increasing demand for business digitization, adoption of cloud technology, less dependency on professional developers, and stringent government norms are the key factors driving low-code development platform industry

Source:

PS Market Research: Low Code Development Platform Market

Oracle APEX on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Interestingly, Oracle today is making its popular APEX low-code development platform available as a managed cloud service that developers can use to build data-driven enterprise applications quickly and easily.

  • Unlike the original APEX, which was exclusively tied to the Oracle Database, APEX Application Development is now available as a standalone service that can be used with a wide range of applications.
    Used by 500K Developers

    On OCI $260 per month

    Support for 500+ Users Unlimited applications

    Elastically scales as per need

    A recent study from Pique Solutions showed that developers could build enterprise applications 38x faster with the Oracle APEX service without having to learn complex, full-stack technologies.

  • The Oracle APEX architecture provides extremely tight integration with the database, enabling a 10x reduction in round trips between the application and the database, resulting in much faster response times for end-users of data-driven applications. Additionally, APEX allows application developers to fully exploit the power and simplicity of SQL.

Oracle APEX Application Development – Comprehensive Low Code Platform

Oracle APEX Application Development – Framework

Used to build desktop and mobile applications for the Oracle Database. Oracle APEX enables you to design, develop and deploy beautiful, responsive, database-driven applications, either on-premises or in the cloud.

  • Quickly build reports, forms, charts, calendars, etc. on top of the data in your database
  • IT Developers and “citizen-developers” who know a little SQL can readily build applications.
  • Oracle APEX can also take advantage of the large majority of Oracle Database features.

Oracle APEX Application Development – Characteristics

Without a client software, APEX is a meta-data model execution engine and easier to maintain in contrast to code generation with the most efficient execution engine for Oracle databases.

With a web browser, you can do everything you need to create apps:

  • Model database objects
  • Load/unload data
  • Create REST interfaces on this data
  • Build applications on these database objects
  • Run and deploy applications

Oracle APEX Application Development – Architecture

Oracle APEX Application Development – Value Proposition

Use Cases Apex Can Help Solve

Use case 1 – Transform your spreadsheets to web apps

For Spreadsheet replacement, you can drag and drop CSV, XLS, XML or even JSON files into APEX.

APEX creates all the base tables, and create a new app based on that spreadsheet in minutes.

You can even create charts, calendars, validation rules, and more in mere minutes

  • Copy / paste or upload a spreadsheet file
  • Creates table in oracle database
  • Determines best-fit data types
  • Uploads data into oracle table
  • Creates first-cut of app
  • Move to a single source of truth
  • Send out a URL not a file
  • Secure, scalable, multi-user app
  • Add validations to improve data quality
  • Superior reporting with faceted search & dashboards
  • Extend with charts, calendars, and more

 

Use Case 2 –Rapid application development

  • Build apps in days / weeks not months / years
  • Use powerful wizards to create fully featured apps
  • Low-code capabilities allow non-IT professionals to also build or help build apps
  • Easily modify to meet changing requirements
  • Rapidly iterate to production-ready app
  • Opportunistic 
  • Simplistic, tactical apps to meet immediate need
  • Webify paper processes
  • Generally developed by one or two people

 

Use Case 3 –Modernizing Oracle Forms

  • APEX is the natural evolution of forms
  • Both based on SQL and PL / SQL
  • Re-use DB packages, procedures, functions
  • Easily train forms developers to develop APEX
  • Proof-of-concept using subset of Forms apps
  • Organization-wide apps, rather than back-office
  • External apps for customers / partners
  • Mobile-first apps
  • Net new requirements

 

Use Case 4 – Build or Extend enterprise applications

  • Quickly build custom mission-critical apps
  • Extend ERPs and other enterprise software such as EBS, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, SAP, and SalesForce
  • Provide organization-specific dashboards and reports
  • Improved workflows
  • Enhance data capture, corporate data reporting and maintenance
  • Meet non-standard or industry specific requirements
  • Optimize common business functions
  • Integrate disparate data sources
  • Scale to hundreds of thousands of users
  • Leverage enterprise features of Oracle Autonomous

 

Use Case 5 – Integrated AppDev as a Service

  • Optional ”Self-Service” mode
  • Turns APEX into a private APP Dev Service
  • Each workspace provisions a database schema
  • Approval can be manual or automatic
  • Allows IT to deliver a service to citizen developers
  • Allows IT to govern data lifecycle, data management, and standardization of identity management
  • Used by 100’s of customers 

 

APEX on Always Free Autonomous Database Vs. APEX Service

With Oracle Cloud Free Tier come Always Free Services which includes Autonomous Databases (2 instances). These Always Free Autonomous DB instances come with a generous capacity. The idea behind Always Free is to learn, explore and do POCs and when you are ready move to a Paid service which comes with support and many other capabilities listed on this slide.

Global Companies are Today Leveraging Oracle APEX on Oracle Cloud

One of the leading British communications company, providing mobile, fixed, broadband and TV services
  • Uses APEX to manage entire infrastructure lifecycle from provisioning to retirement
  • APEX was selected as it is flexible, easy to customize, and allows for developing applications incredibly quickly with minimal coding

 

 

Leader in intelligent digital mining improves operational profitability and sustainability – Aaccelerates time to value

 

 

  • Ingests GBs of daily IoT sensor data at 2x faster performance and with flexible auto-scaling  
  • 65% reduction in DBA workloads increased productivity on development and reporting 
  • Built-in APEX speeds development to deployment of new low code apps from 6 weeks to 1 week 
  • Future plans to use Oracle Machine Learning’s once Phyton compatibility is available. 

 

Conclusion

IT Convergence can help you kickstart your Oracle APEX journey or even accelerate APEX to Oracle Cloud migration journey to maximize your time to value. Other key benefits which ITC can deliver:

– Inflight Upgrade of Oracle APEX on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
– Assess & optimize APEX to Minimize architecture
– Oracle APEX integration with Identity Management SSO

Our unique methodologies and tools deliver the most cost effective and time saving for Cloud solutions.

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