Oracle APEX vs. Oracle SOA Suite

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

In comparison to Open source products like Apache Camel and Mule ESB, Oracle ESB is more robust and offers better enterprise capabilities. However, the licensing costs are fairly prohibitive and are preventing widespread product adoption. At our university, we had already purchased the Oracle Campus Solutions ERP suite and hence had little problems integrating their OSB as well.

Incentivized

• 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

• It is lightweight and one can easily integrate with different applications, databases, JMS, or Web services through different protocols.
• It helps in building reusable, well-defined services.

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

• Service implementation is not agile like microservices.
• The architecture is so complex and could result in higher latency with so many layers to traverse.
• Deployment of multiple web services in one session

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

We have had not many issues with Oracle Service Bus and it's very stable for our requirements. It's highly available and helps us implement Tier1 applications on it.

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

It's an excellent enterprise service bus and has very stable features. We have been using it since 2008. We did hit into some issues. But, recreating the service helped fix many issues. Also, deployment to various environments was easy. Also, the plugin on Eclipse helps to build proxy and business services quick and easy.

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

We had some issues with MQ connectivity through OSB and our experience was poor with the support team. They do respond. But, it felt like we are ignored and we had bad support. We had to escalate and things used to get dragged for weeks before we get more quality questions on how to pursue investigation.

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

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.

Mule ESB is an open source tool and would definitely cost less, however is not as sophisticated a product for the business functionality we need at US Cellular.. I have reviewed IBM WebSphere Message Broker, is very cumbersome and not very user friendly. Despite some of the license cost concerns, Oracle Service Bus stands out as an ideal Enterprise Service Bus solution at US Cellular

Incentivized

• 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

• We were able to increase efficiency in our lead generation process.
• Improved data driven decisions.
• Reduction in processing time by aligning resources on time.

Incentivized