As someone who’s covered databases on and off for—well never mind for how long—there’s always been a tension between the secure fortress that is the corporate database and the need of normal people to make the most and best use of that data.
That’s one major problem addressed by the new Oracle APEX cloud service. This new managed service can help companies get the most out of their key data by letting mere mortals (as opposed to professional software developers) build applications that make use of that data.
This is the best of both worlds—enabling the fast creation of graphical, easy-to-use apps that bring to the surface important data while allowing the Oracle database to continue managing, analyzing, monitoring, and securing it.
To be fair, APEX is one of those overnight successes that’s actually been around for nearly 20 years. There are now half a million APEX users across 50,000 companies around the world. Not for nothing, but that’s a pretty energized group that newbies can turn to for informal help and support.
So yes, Oracle APEX is a low-code development tool that was around long before the term “low-code development” took the tech world by storm. What’s new here is that Oracle has made APEX more easily and readily available at low cost to people who want to create beautiful-looking data-driven applications but are not necessarily database administrators or programming whizzes.
If, for example, you manage a product line, you have a pretty good idea of pricing or sales or material information that you would like to present to your staff, customers., or partners. With APEX, you can mock-up and produce an application simply by pointing-and-clicking on on-screen modules instead of requesting that a company programmer build it for you—with all the delay and tsouris that causes.
In addition to making the most from information residing in your Oracle databases, you can also incorporate information from remote sources including other SQL, JSON and spatial databases as well as REST-based applications.
