Alpha Anywhere vs. Oracle APEX

We use Alpha Anywhere to develop large scale business applications. So far, we haven't found any real limitations. This is exemplified by my response to my customers who frequently ask, "Is it possible..." I always interrupt them before this sentence goes any further by telling them, "with our development platform, anything's possible" (then we have to discuss whether the time/cost is worth the added benefit of what they're requesting).

Incentivized

It is appropriate for database application development supporting data driven processes, online transaction processing, BI/reports/analytics ... for addressing about any business data processing need I can think of. Oracle Application Express is fantastic for creating beautiful rich user interfaces with support for all major browsers rendering well on a range of devices. It is less appropriate for applications requiring native low level access to device peripherals and is less appropriate for applications that must execute offline without network/internet connection to supporting application and database servers.

Incentivized

• We import our medication files.
• We save the patient’s History & Physical documents to S3 buckets. The documents range from 30-300 pages.
• We export billing files to the Medicare mainframe.
• We run over 80 audits on each chart per day.

• It is an easy tool to adopt, which allowed us to replace developments in Oracle Forms in many cases.
• It is very simple to develop different kinds of analysis, in a faster and more friendly way than running Oracle Reports.
• It helped us to extend our approval workflow, in order to cope with difficult branches that were hard to solve with the standard workflow.
• It was possible to develop web applications, to share information and transactions with our commercial partners.

Incentivized

• There is no drag and drop form designer however this is not a big problem once you get used to it and through the use of genies, templates, etc.

Incentivized

• For complex APEX applications you need to be a pro expert in PL/SQL
• Debugging in APEX can be complicated if there is a logical error. Syntax errors will end up shown as ORA errors
• Lack of designer interface. Even though you are designing a form you need to do it by means of APEX interface using a series of steps, no UI for design
• Oracle specific not applicable for other databases

Incentivized

I felt very comfortable using Oracle Application Express from the start. I designed my data model and quickly developed the basic CRUD pages for master tables. Then I designed the main functionality and was able to test and deploy it in a couple of days work. I will probably share the app with other members of the team and continue adding some features in the short term.

Incentivized

Because it's very easy to develop, fast, secure, has a lot of features. It's like a prototyping tool such as figma, but it can be used as a real product. Dynamic action, plugin, rest api, minimize a lot of coding, a lot of templates, PWA, really bring Oracle APEX functionality to be able to solve most common internal users pain points.

Incentivized

Very active and knowledgeable community support includes quick and helpful responses from the Oracle employees on the product development team. I've never had to raise an official support request - everything is dealt with via forums and user groups - or via direct emails. The supposrt commuinty is one of the great things about Apex.

Incentivized

Using it on the cloud is really simple, the entire process of configuring and provisioning an Oracle Database takes only a few minutes (less than 10) and then Oracle APEX is already deployed on the database, so you just have to start using it. I would strongly recommend using APEX on Oracle Cloud Free Tier.

Incentivized

I stopped evaluating alternate products several years ago as Alpha Anywhere has continued to develop and keep up with technological advances to my satisfaction. Having made the decision to focus development with Alpha Anywhere, I have not looked back and continue to develop at pace for my existing and growing client base.

Oracle APEX and Oracle Visual Builder are both low-code development platforms within the Oracle ecosystem, but they serve different purposes. Oracle APEX is more suited for the people who are familiar with SQL, PLSQL. It provides rapid application development features based on data residing in Oracle database. It's a low code platform and best suited for web based applications/extensions based on Oracle DB that may use REST APIs and other web services. It also provides mobile application support. Oracle Visual Builder is best suited for web applications based on Oracle Cloud services. It utilizes javascript based drag-drop UI builder. It's very deeply integrated with Oracle Fusion Cloud platform.

• We see it is becoming more & more valuable in our business
• Our competition has everything we do, except a Clerking program which we developed in Alpha
• Converting to the Cloud hasn't been cheap for us but we feel it will be well worth it

• It has increased our development output over Forms greatly. For instance, when starting at my current company, I was able to replace our aging ASP Intranet site within 4 months when our IT manager had budgeted over a year for the task.
• We've been able to standardize under one technology, incorporating previously unsupportable disparate systems under one roof.
• It's free with an Oracle Database so the only investment was our time, something we now have more of thanks to Application Express.

Incentivized