Oracle Application Express (APEX) Reviews

With APEX, I developed a web portal for an insurance company. With this portal, every agency can look at its customer's personal data, their claims, policies, coverage, and collections.

I am using this solution and I am developing software for my customers.

For three years, we have done the same application with more than 10 people.

With APEX, we can reduce our costs by reducing the size of our teams.

Before APEX, we were using Oracle Forms. This required larger teams.

With small teams of four to six, with a maximum of 10 people, you can build every kind of product.

APEX will also benefit enterprise companies.

Developing in a web environment is very easy with just one browser. With a username and password, I can develop this product very easily. With this product, it is very easy to develop. Many sample applications have been created by Apex in the Applications Gallery.

You can built multilingual applications, each user can interact the application with their own depending localization parameter.

Apex supports Restful Service in JSON format. It is very easy to create a web service for Apex Environment.

It's suitable for team development.

It would be my dream to merge two products into one. Visual Builder and APEX should meld in one product. 

Each has different strengths. Visual Builder is very strong in Java, and you can build HTML applications very easily with low code. APEX is very important to have a direct connection to the Oracle database.

If these two products would meld into one in the future, it would be very nice. 

In the future of APEX, I would expect features more like Visual Builder. Also being able to use HTML codes directly. Visual Builder produces HTML codes and source codes.

APEX does not have source code, it runs from the database. We can export our objects, our source, and import them in different environments and different hardware, but it's not readable in HTML codes. 

I have been using this solution for three years.

We are using the latest version and will be upgrading to 20.2

It's a stable solution.

Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a scalable product.

We have four users in our organization.

We don't need direct support from Oracle. We are using Oracle Websites.

It's very easy to install and easy to deploy.

The first time, I spend six weeks, but now it can be done in a few hours.

We need only one person to maintain this solution.

We completed the implementation of it ourselves.

This is a built-in license with data.

When buying the data license, APEX is included.

Currently, I am doing some research on Visual Builder. I saw a demo.

It's an application that is ready for the cloud. You cannot use it on-premises or on your local machine. It's just for the cloud.

They have very nice features.

You can easily build your applications at a very low cost, and it is very powerful with JavaScript.

We are a consultancy firm for IT purposes, software. Especially, we are engaged in the insurance and banking finance sector. 

We have a very large and deep knowledge of accounting software. Our team is very experienced, senior developers, and business analysts.

We are migrating our Oracle Forms to APEX. In the future, we will continue to use APEX.

I would highly recommend this product to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The only feature which is useful is that it makes it easier to quickly create publicly accessible applications. We were using it to make these applications.  

We used it in addition to Forms and Report Services because Forms and Report Services at that time were client-server applications. It used to be an addition to the Oracle development environment.  

Right now I am working on two projects. One of them is using Oracle Forms and APEX.  

The valuable feature is the basic use case: it makes the process of creating publicly accessible applications easier.  

The first thing I can think of that needs to be improved with this product is that there is a problem with security. In all of the applications I saw, they stored the passwords in the configuration files. I think this is a big issue. The security module is supposed to be included in the APEX connection component, but people connect to the Oracle HTTP Server and the password goes to the HTTP server. It is using the HTTP server for the security part. We did some analysis and we figured out that we had to move to another product.  

Because security is not satisfactory, we created our own connection mechanism in ORDS. It was a better way to keep the passwords encrypted and to make access to the APEX applications a little bit more secure. But the way APEX causes applications to store the security information is a big issue and a security vulnerability. ORDS is pretty straightforward and Oracle WebLogic Server is very flexible and a very nice feature.  

Also, the Oracle application page is supposed to be able to cancel access to the application. From what we found, this is not done properly. The connection is hanging and sometimes different people who connect to the application use the same ID. This can seriously interfere with users who are already connected. These are both very bad security issues.  

There is also a disadvantage in that it is pretty hard to fix bugs in APEX. It is very tricky. Basically, the Oracle objects generate the HTML code and cast it to the HTTP server. You have to be very careful with the HTTP Syntax for the sake of compatibility. Some browsers accept the code that gets generated and some browsers not. It is very hard to debug these coding issues.  

We have been using Oracle Application Express (APEX) since 2015.  

Applications are usually accessible by thousands of users at a time without stability issues.  

You can use multiple servers and the scalability of APEX is really pretty good from an end-user standpoint.  

I do not think there is really much of a limitation on how many people can use the generated applications. This is one thing it is good at.  

I used to work with other Oracle products like Fusion Middleware, Forms, and Reports. Since 2016, I worked less with APEX because there are other solutions that I prefer. My experience with APEX is that it is a little limited right now. Because of that we actually moved most application development to ORDS (Oracle REST [Representational State Transfer] Data Services).  

ORDS is more efficient and easier to use. APEX is compatible with ORDS as well. The problem with APEX is mostly that I do not like to use different vendors for HTTP server and Oracle WebLogic Server. ORDS is supposed to be more of a native, all-in-one solution. So we try to use ORDS for development projects because Oracle HTTP Server is not supported anymore by Oracle and this is a problem for APEX security. You have to use a Tomcat server or something else with APEX.  

I worked with APEX to do the initial setup and I have never set up the environment fully on my own. It is complex enough that I do not think I would want to do it without their help.  

APEX is a pretty old application and a pretty old environment. Most people are usually trying to get rid of it rather than bringing it onboard. For anyone still considering it, I strongly suggest going to the cloud application because the general strategy of Oracle Corporation is to support applications on the cloud. There are multiple other solutions to consider from Oracle or other vendors as well.  

On a scale of one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Oracle Application Express depending on the task. For some tasks, it is just perfect. You can say it would be an eight or nine-out-of-ten for quickly creating an application that does not need strong security. But for some tasks, like when you try enhancing an application, the score is pretty low. In that case, I would give the product a three or a four.  

Our primary use is to develop secure applications for the Oracle Database. It is like an administrator for data processing functions.

This product allows us to manage our data processing using simple screens.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use.

The user interface is not complex.

Workflow capabilities should be added.

Better connection and integration with non-Oracle databases is needed.

I have been using Oracle APEX for the past four to five years.

We have not had a problem where it has crashed. However, it may be that our application is not complex enough.

We have approximately eight people using Oracle APEX. At this point, we are trying to reduce our usage.

I have not personally been in contact with technical support.

We did use another similar product before implementing APEX.

The initial setup is not very complex. Our deployment took four or five months.

A consultant assisted us with implementation and deployment.

We are currently in the process of migrating from APEX to Microsoft PowerApps.

My advice for anybody who is implementing APEX is to use the default parameters and do not do anything that is customized.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our company developed several health care portals where patients can go and find doctors and things like that. We are now testing whether we can shift a few things from the previous alignment tool which is managed by our data service team. We work on small projects and have around 50 users. We're customers of Oracle and I'm an EHR implementation specialist. 

This solution is like a rapid application development concept. Given that it's all about time and everything happens within a much shorter time span, it makes for efficient software delivery and a good product. If the client is happy, I'm happy. 

I think Apex is like many similar tools that are currently available. If you want specific reports, you have to implement third party tools. It would make a big difference if the reporting was included in the product so that we wouldn't need to get it from third parties. 

I've been using this solution for 18 months. 

The solution is very stable. 

Apex is still evolving and we initially had scalability issues. You can't make large applications with the limitations we had, but you can make small apps really fast, if you have the extra backup.

We haven't had to use technical support, we track our own flow. 

The initial setup was a little complex. You have to run some steps on it. That said, deployment took maybe an hour or two. We have minimal maintenance requirements. If there's an issue you just look back at the cache but most of the time it's okay. 

Apex is a great tool, you can use it for your regular business affairs and it's a very productive solution with great features. I really appreciate the people who created it.

We make software for municipals.

It's fairly easy to make a user-friendly interface. 

It has a bit of a strict framework, you have to make all the time adjustments in their JavaScript. Another downside is that it's only available for Oracle databases.

I have been working with Oracle APEX for a year now. 

It is quite stable. 

Scalability will depend on your database. 

I don't have any experience with their support. 

As a developer, I used to work with Delphix which was a little different. 

The installation is quite difficult. Because somehow it doesn't work if you begin with a clean installation. It's much easier to use it with the cloud setup or do a box. If you want to install it from scratch, then it's a bit difficult.

Oracle is very expensive. Too expensive in my opinion.

My advice to someone considering this solution is to look into older applications. 

I would rate Oracle APEX an eight out of ten. 

I use the solution for creating a lot of applications and functions. In my company, we need a lot of forms, a lot of queries and a lot of reports, and I must develop these things very fast. Oracle APEX makes it very easy to do fast development. For example, I can quickly build a financial report, a product report and I can use it for quickly creating approval workflows. Oracle APEX helps a great deal with these tasks.

I started to develop all of the reports my company needs in Oracle APEX. Because the APEX product has a lot of features like automating chart and graph creation, depending on what you want to do, you can easily assemble reports. Another thing that is very helpful is the easy creation of forms for approval and approval workflows. For example, when you must get approval from a manager something, you can easily create the form and the manager can receive it a mobile device and you can get approval for anything quickly. It is helpful for speeding along the process of development.

The first feature that I think is very important is that the product is able to safely deploy on the web. You can develop any application and you can share it on the web without any installation by the end client. The second-best option in Oracle APEX is that it is very easy and very fast. You can quickly create forms and reports and in the reports feature there are a lot of options to help complete tasks. In some ways, it is the same as in Microsoft Excel. You can create charts or create almost anything that has the same features as Excel and it will be immediately available for the end client to use it.

In APEX, they changed the layout which is good because in earlier versions it was a little difficult. In Oracle APEX 18 and 19 it is very much improved and I think it is much better for the improvements. Things are easier to use. For example, when I want to change a form field, form button and anything else on a form, the layout of the product now makes it easier. They could continue to make improvements like this.

I think I only have one problem that I can think of with Oracle APEX in the layout. I can create a cool and beautiful layout. But there are times I want to change something, but I only can use CSS and HTML. Sometimes this makes it so I am not able to accomplish what I want exactly. I think it is better to keep changes to the layout in Oracle APEX only, not use any additional things because something might go wrong. It would be nice if APEX supported Java and everything sold with Java capability.

We don't need to use the Oracle technical support because there is a lot of good information in the Oracle APEX forum. We can use the area to resolve the problems that we run into and there is no need to connect to the technical support and wait for a response.

To learn more about APEX, I use websites, a lot of forums and books. I have a lot of books on the internet and I read and use them. On YouTube, there are a lot of videos for learning about Oracle APEX and other Oracle products. It is a good resource.

I remember the first installation and that time the installation was a little difficult and maybe even very complex. But after maybe 10 or 15 installations now, it is very easy because I know the product better. After gaining some experience, it is very easy.

What was a little difficult the first time is that you must create the network on the database. You must create a different tablespace. After installation, you must use the WebLogic server to launch Oracle APEX form. Then you set the web service and then create WebLogic services. There are a lot of steps there and it is a little different and a bit difficult when you have not had the experience.

When creating projects it might take five or six months for a big production. But I have also completed some products in only two weeks of development.

It is very different for different projects. The project that took only two weeks for developing was because of the size of the project. It was small and I only had five or six forms to build. On the big project that took six months for development, it was because there were a lot of forms, a lot of objects and the project was a lot more complicated.

We are doing all the deployment and deployment on our own. I have a team in my company of four people who are experts in Oracle APEX and we help each other. We don't need to seek outside the company.

Even with four in the team, a small project it could be that one person is enough to complete it. Two different projects will not be the same. In my company, I am involved with different departments. I have a database department and development department. I'm in the development department and the use of resources for big projects will depend what has to be done and what expertise is needed. In one big project, I used a five-person team and also needed two DBAs to help them.

In my country I don't pay any license fees for Oracle APEX. Oracle APEX is a free license, but only Oracle APEX. The database and other products you need to go with it have a licensing fee.

As far as additional costs, there are a lot of patches that we needed on the database and I think a lot of additional costs for peripheral things.

I think it's a very good solution for developing web applications. It's very easy to expand the web application and have strong security in the functionality and availability on the Oracle APEX. I think if some company chooses Oracle APEX as a solution, it's a better base for any web development.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate APEX as absolutely a 10. When I started to work in my company they solved a lot of problems for creating a small application, a small form for reporting for anything by using Oracle APEX. Now that I use Oracle APEX I think it is the best solution for my development.

Our primary use for this solution is web-based applications built on an Oracle database backend. It is suitable for applications from small proofs of concept to enterprise-scale.

Extreme rapid application development. Allows existing Oracle knowledge base to be utilized for building web applications.

This solution offers declarative, low-code development. Improves delivery speed, accuracy, and performance.

It provides attractive GUIs allowing professionally-styled applications without the need to know HTML, CSS, or JavaScript.

Portability: It can be easily moved to other environments.

We would like to see tighter integration with the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

The valuable feature is simplicity. It is easy to learn and implement.

I would like to see more flexibility and productivity.

We have been using this for two years.

There were no issues with deployment.

There were no issues with stability.

There were no issues with scalability.