Low Code Development and Oracle APEX

Low code development is in fashion, and there's many offerings in the market that allow the power of low code development to be unlocked by the enterprise. The allure of low code is the time to market, where solutions, particularly web apps, can be quickly created by following a wizard, and can really be done by non-developers or "citizen" developers. Due to its benefits, many companies have adopted a low code strategy to supplement their existing software engineering offerings, where possible, specially where subject matter experts in the business could leverage low code in a self-service capacity, if the requirements aren't too complex.

Oracle APEX is available at no extra cost with your Oracle database, additionally, if you have an Autonomous database (in OCI), APEX (and ORDS - Oracle Rest Data services), already comes available and enabled in the autonomous databases. This allows you to create applications very quickly on top of the data you already have in your database, minimizing data movement, simplifying security and support, and more. For more information regarding APEX, and to try it for free, you can visit https://apex.oracle.com/en/.

I have observed where companies, who already own Oracle Database licenses and have a large footprint in the space, bypass Oracle APEX and jump on paid low code offerings from other vendors, and whereas this post will not focus heavily on what Oracle APEX is, because it's very well documented as it has been around for over 20 years already, there's definitely content that those trying to jump on APEX or even experienced users may not be aware of, and will be shared here.

The APEX Product Managers are Jayson Hanes and Monica Godoy, you can find them on LinkedIn and follow them for news, etc.

Below you will find information about the APEX Roadmap, training, events, and more:

1. APEX 23.1 is out, the feature set can be viewed at https://apex.oracle.com/en/platform/features/whats-new-231/.
2. Past Roadmap and Upcoming Road (see Appendix A)
3. Training and Certifications (see Appendix B)
4. Events calendar for APEX: https://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/r/grand_prix/apex-events/events?session=6298691857842
5. APEX Office Hours with Oracle (see Appendix C)
6. APEX Idea Lab (Different from the Cloud Customer Connect Idea Lab) (see Appendix D)
7. Cost model in OCI (see Appendix E)

Appendix A (Roadmaps)

Past Roadmap:

Upcoming Roadmap (Post 23.1):

Appendix B (Training)

You can try APEX for free at: https://apex.oracle.com/en/

There’s also professional training available, as seen below.

Appendix C (Office Hours)

Appendix D (Ideas)

Appendix E (OCI Cost)

If you own Oracle Databases and want a low code solution that uses data from your Oracle databases primarily (although APEX can connect to other sources via API's and "DB Links"), then APEX is truly your best bet, among all the low code solutions.

OML - Oracle Machine Learning

The advent of AI and ML is near and fast approaching. Offerings such as ChatGPT are changing the way we go about doing research and just ways of working in general. To this end, it is worth noting that great strides have already been made relative to data science and analysis, and that Oracle has a strong offering that allows descriptive and predictive analytics to be performed where your data resides, which can be different from Generative AI, like ChatGPT, but just as powerful based on context.

If you have an autonomous database in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, then you already have default access to the Oracle Machine Learning features within it. After performing a few steps from the OCI Admin console within your autonomous database area, you can access the Oracle Machine Learning Home Page, where you can create a Workspace, which encapsulates your ML projects, and you can also create notebooks, which is an interface for the creation of complex queries using SQL. There's also full permission sets where you can grant viewer, developer or manager to users for your workspace and child attributes.

The below graphic from Oracle showcases the features of the OML offering inside the ADW/ATP:

The below graphic from Oracle shows how OML is "different" from generic ML:

So why is this important? This offering gives you the ability to do data discovery and analytics on top of your data, without having to move it out of the database which can create performance issues, security issues, etc. Using the below features of the OML engine, you can find hidden patterns in your data that can both benefit your operations and processes, bottom line, and more.

You can also use Python and R via the OML interfaces provided if you are more comfortable with that toolset, versus PLSQL. Additionally, there's API support for OML itself, so that a tool like Postman can be used versus the web UI, the Git Hub project with Oracle provided collections can be found at: https://github.com/oracle-samples/oracle-db-examples/tree/main/machine-learning/oml-services/postman-collection-examples

The below graphics from Oracle showcase the capabilities of the OML service, in terms of what algorithms and functionality are provided:

Overall, for an embedded service of the autonomous database at no additional cost, this is a great feature that allows several algorithms to be leveraged out of the box, plus the capability to build your own, and definitely worth checking out further! Oracle has a simple course over at Oracle University and there's even a certification for it and can be found at: Become an Associate on Oracle Machine Learning with Autonomous Database - Oracle MyLearn