This article explains about the Oracle APEX offering from Oracle.
Oracle Corporation has always created software products keeping its customer’s best interests in mind. They have always been the cornerstone of enterprise systems for the last 40 years and are constantly getting better. Oracle offers its customers the choice and flexibility to meet all kinds of requirements. Oracle APEX, or commonly known as Oracle Application Express is one such product that was launched by Oracle Corporation to ease the complexities faced by business professionals and teams using Oracle Database. Let’s dive right in and understand more about this product’s working, features, benefits, and much more.
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Oracle APEX – Table of Contents
What is Oracle APEX?
Oracle APEX or Oracle Application Express is an Oracle product completely free of cost that enables the developers to rapidly create web-based applications on an Oracle database by just using a web browser of your choice. This APEX tool simply runs in a web browser allowing the creation of web applications in an asserting manner. It requires all the simple steps such as selecting pre-built components, configuring the components, and then bundling them up in a web application. All these steps can be done without the need of writing too much code making the lives of developers simpler.
It can be downloaded from the official website of Oracle along with the documentation and then you are ready to go.
Why Oracle APEX?
Oracle APEX developers made this software keeping in mind their sole purpose and mission which was to empower developers all around the globe to easily build compelling applications with superior performance, functionality, end-user experience, and results. To provide on this mission, this software aims at getting rid of all the enormous complexities faced by developers during developing and deploying the enterprise apps. It is simpler and faster as compared to other solutions that are present in the market, it is lightweight, it has lower costs, and it has an easy deployment which makes it just the product that developers need.
Why you should use Oracle APEX?
This software is the primary tool of Oracle for database and enterprise-grade web application development with the help of SQL and PL/SQL. It is the de-facto tool of choice by customers who are looking for better and faster results as they have seen adoption explode in this software over the past few years. One should use this software because it:
- Eliminates complexities – Oracle APEX is known to eliminate all the complexities that occur at every layer of the development and deployment process of which the result is a low-code platform that is comparatively faster, simpler, light-weighted, and of low costs than the other solutions.
- Simple Development – It is easy to use and learn. It guides the developers through the creation of the applications as it has a rich, browser-based, intuitive interface provided by the Application Builder. It lets the developers add high-level functionality to their applications with the least coding required due to which most of the customers become productive in less than a week.
- Powerful and Proven – It is suitable for almost every industry. From simple apps to the most critical apps which are used by millions of users worldwide, it can do the job perfectly fine for anyone. Its elegant architecture has been used to power many applications around the globe.
- Secure – It is designed in a way to build web applications that are highly secured. The customer’s applications stay protected and remain state-of-the-art even in this world which is full of resourceful hackers, changing web-standards, and evolving security standards.
- Portable – It is portable which means you can run your Oracle APEX anywhere where there is an Oracle database, may it be on-premises or Oracle cloud. You can deploy the applications of Oracle APEX with ease across any environment.
Oracle APEX Features
Oracle APEX provides the developers with all the tools they need to be productive, deliver results on time, and produce stunning solutions for customer’s business. It provides the following features:
- Data:
- Faceted Search – Quickly search and filter data with the help of features such as SQL driven, auto-discovery, Count computation, and multiple facets.
- Turn data into information – Searches, filters, and finds your data and turns it into information. It also remembers your reports for future reference.
- Edit data effortlessly – Interactive full-featured grid and flexible editing allow you to master every detail and edit data without much effort required.
- Charting capabilities – It has a powerful chart and visualization capabilities. The charts are responsive, highly customizable, and are present in extensive ranges.
- Local remote REST access – It allows the users to integrate data from web services and other sources. It provides SQL on a remote database and lets you build REST APIs easily and most efficiently.
- User Interface:
- Responsive – Smart layouts and grid layouts present and mobile-friendly.
- Versatile UI Components – Common UI patterns, Application navigation, and live templates options available.
- Easy Customization – Theme roller and styles enables easy customization and complete control.
- Font Apex – 1100+ handcrafted icons, two families, one library, and modifiers availed to customers.
- Security:
- Authentication and Authorization – Authentication schemes, authorization schemes, and extensibility are added features for the secure management of applications.
- Session Management – Server-side session management is done through item session state, session control, and collections in APEX.
- Secure by default – It has highly secure settings such as parameter tampering protection, XSS prevention, and advisor tools.
- Accessibility:
- Out-of-the-box accessibility – It is built with accessibility in mind thus giving accessibility UI components, theming functionalities, and no modes required for the use of accessibility.
- Developer Assistance – It provides key functionality for the developer’s assistance such as advisor checks, universal theme contrast checking, and an accessibility guide.
- Useful Resources – It provides many useful resources such as Accessibility guidelines, conformance statements, and known issues help notes.
- Monitoring:
- Activity Monitoring – Oracle APEX automatically records the events that occur when your application is being used. It provides application runtime activity, developer activity, and comprehensive reporting.
- Code instrumentation and Tracing – This feature helps the user find bugs and performance issues in the application using debug mode, SQL Trace and using development cycle integration.
- Globalization:
- Translation – It allows running the application in multiple languages providing translatable application attributes, messages, and XLIFF based translation facilities to the customer.
- Localization – It formats and displays the content in the application which is based on where the user is located. It uses number formatting, time zones, and territories, and right-to-left support.
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Oracle APEX Architecture
The Oracle APEX has a simple 3-tier architecture in which requests are sent from the browser to the database through a web server. In the database, all the data manipulation, business logic, and processing are done. It ensures zero-latency data access, scalability, and top performance. A web request is sent to ORDS through a web browser and is handed to Oracle Database to be actioned. Once the processing is done, the result is sent back to the browser.
- Oracle RAD Stack – It is based on ORDS, APEX, and Oracle Database to develop and deploy powerful and beautiful apps. ORDS enables developers with SQL and database skills to develop REST APIs, APEX enables them to build stunning, scalable, and secure apps and Oracle Database enables the apps to be enterprise-ready from day one.
- Metadata Driven – Metadata is stored in the Oracle database. When the application runs, the APEX engine reads that data and displays the requested page.
- Stateless Access – Once an API call is made and the response is sent back to the browser, the connection used is sent back to the database pool and can be used by another request.
- AppDev as a Service – This architecture can provide automated and self-serviced application development platform. It has IT governance, collaboration, self-service capabilities, and direct access to corporate data.
Oracle APEX Benefits
People develop with Oracle APEX and always rely upon it to get their work done as it lets them quickly build bespoke applications according to their needs and customer’s requirements at low cost. It further allows the developers to minimize the complexity and providing them with features that they require to solve their problems without the need to become experts in different web technologies. The benefits provided by it are:
- If the customer has the Oracle database then they already maybe having APEX pre-installed ready to be used. It is free of cost and is as good as commercial software.
- It has modern-looking interfaces. It is compatible with HTML5 standards thus providing clean and slick customizable interfaces that are suitable for both desktop and mobile devices.
- It is a browser-based framework thus it is light-weighted. It is as efficient as the developer’s code and as fast as DBAs.
- APEX comes with interactive reports and a range of features so that the users can mold their data in their preferred format.
- It is an application with PL/SQL as it is the language that underpins it. If your team is experienced in this, they are already halfway there. They can be confident enough to use it and get the desired results.
- It takes care of security, user management, and access to the users now have to just concentrate on building the applications which are the reason why they can build the applications shockingly fast.
- It is well supported by My Oracle Support and Oracle forums.
- It eliminates mapping between relational and application objects, eliminates remote procedure call complexity, the proliferation of database connections, middle-tier application logic, and complexity of high availability and disaster recovery.
- It is perfect for students, business users, architects, CIOs as it is of low cost, light-weighted, easy to deploy, and enables simpler and faster development of applications.
Learn Oracle APEX to Unleash a Modern Career
Oracle APEX New Offerings
The Oracle Application Express 5 is the greatest advancement to date of Oracle APEX. It allows the users to create, design, and deploy the most beautiful, database-driven, and responsive mobile and desktop applications using simply a web browser. It continuously gets better for customer satisfaction. It offers new features and functionalities such as:
- Page Designer –Powerful browser-based IDE providing better visual representations and better features for making the work of developers easier.
- Universal Theme – Simpler and more capable new universal theme of a user interface enabling effortless customization.
- User Interface Enhancements – Much finer control over templates provided through Theme Subscriptions, Template Options, and Theme Styles.
- All new Application Builder Design – User experience improved with the help of a new user interface with application builder design providing new color palette, icons, menus, etc.
- Interactive Reports – Multiple reports on a single page, modernized actions and fixed attribute options enhance both developer and end-user capabilities.
- Mobile Reporting – displays all the data even in mobile devices.
- Modal Dialogues – Users can easily define modal pages by just setting the display and appropriate template. All other work will be done by APEX.
- All new calendar – New calendar provides built-in support for a month, week, and day views which is much easier to customize.
- Packaged Apps – Additional 19 productivity applications provided with powerful capabilities such as project tracking, group calendar, meeting minutes, etc.
Learn Oracle APEX to Unleash a Modern Career
Advantages and Disadvantages of Oracle APEX
Oracle APEX provides a lot of features and functionality to its customers for a smooth and error-free deployment of their applications. However, they should always look into the advantages and disadvantages of this product too. They are as follows:
Advantages
- It is easy to deploy and is scalable.
- It provides basic support for group development.
- It provides free hosting of demo applications.
- It has a string and supporting user community.
- It is easy to create mock-ups by using pre-built themes.
- DBAs who are familiar with PL/SQL skill set can easily develop web applications.
- UI is easy to use and the user can choose from several templates.
- It is easy to test, configure, build reports, and forms.
- It is ideal for quick prototyping, quick amendments, and enlargements and further, it is easy to maintain, administer users and authorizations.
Disadvantages
- The applications in APEX are created with Oracle’s tools hosted in its database making an implementer susceptible to seller lock-in.
- APEX programs are constrained in their desire for web hosts as very few web hosts provide APEX on their hosting provider.
- It is very complex to deploy applications on an OnPremise database as the user needs to follow a lot of steps.
- It is hard to build single-page applications with it.
- Upgrading can be tough when users have a highly customized application.
- There is no built-in printing solution for the reports.