Oracle Apex

grouchyman

Has anybody got any experience of developing small apps in Oracle Apex and MSAccess . I have experience with PL/SQL and I have been tasked with building a small application (Money in/ Money out kind of thing). Excel has been mentioned, but based on bitter experience I'm not a fan of using spreadsheets for multi-user small apps. So I'm looking at using either Apex or Access and I'm interested in hearing the opinions of anyone who has used both APEX and Access and what their opinion of Apex for developing small apps is vis-a-vis Access?

Thanks

Tom Dunne

Apex makes it easy to develop bad code that is functional and looks pretty.

While I haven't worked on it for at least a year now, I would say it is slightly more cumbersome to develop in compared to access (haven't done that in many years), but once you get your head around the web-based development environment, it's actually relatively straight forward. Oracle pitch it as a department-level (as opposed to enterprise class) replacement for access.

For what you want, Apex does sound like the tool for the job, especially if there are multiple concurrent users.

Just one word of caution - watch out for licensing issues. Oracle aint cheap, Apex technically comes with a database you have already purchased (or paid the license for). So just downloading Apex (or a version of the DB with it ready to go) is not actually as straight forward as you might think.

grouchyman

Tom Dunne wrote: »

Apex makes it easy to develop bad code that is functional and looks pretty.

While I haven't worked on it for at least a year now, I would say it is slightly more cumbersome to develop in compared to access (haven't done that in many years), but once you get your head around the web-based development environment, it's actually relatively straight forward. Oracle pitch it as a department-level (as opposed to enterprise class) replacement for access.

For what you want, Apex does sound like the tool for the job, especially if there are multiple concurrent users.

Just one word of caution - watch out for licensing issues. Oracle aint cheap, Apex technically comes with a database you have already purchased (or paid the license for). So just downloading Apex (or a version of the DB with it ready to go) is not actually as straight forward as you might think.

Thanks for the reply Tom. The DB licensing side of things is ok and is why apex is being considered. I don't have a tight deadline on delivering anything (some time before December I was told) so I might give it a go and see how I get on, I can alway go back to the spreadsheet or access if needs be.

DublinWriter

I heard that Oracle don't recommend Apex for anything mission-critical?

Tom Dunne

DublinWriter wrote: »

I heard that Oracle don't recommend Apex for anything mission-critical?

Yes, that's correct. Though the cynic in me can't help but feel that is more to do with marketing rather than technology.

As I said above, it's pitched at department-level web apps - relatively low (<100) number of users and non-mission critical.