The maturity level of APEX Patrick Hellemans Competence Manager Technology
Once upon a time There was an assignment from your CEO Deliver a new application : Cost-efficient Fast High quality
Is Oracle APEX mature enough? Should we even consider APEX as a valid option?
Is Oracle APEX mature enough? How to start convincing a CEO? What do the analysts say? (Gartner / Forrester) Project triangle (Time / Budget / Quality) Professional software development
What do the analysts say? Gartner / Forrester
Gartner on APEX Oracle APEX is in the adult stage of development: APEX is updated at least annually with new releases that expand functionality APEX training is widely available APEX is used in many new projects The volume of Gartner inquiries on APEX indicates growth APEX has stable programming constructs based on PL/SQL and on JavaScript APEX has outstanding community support. Gartner believes that APEX will grow significantly among Oracle DBMS customers during the next 12 to 36 months.
Forrester on APEX Oracle has come a long way in understanding what customers really want when it comes to accessing data quickly and easily, and APEX delivers such an environment. The tool offers several benefits, including: An easy-to-use application development environment. Consolidation of desktop databases and spreadsheets. Lower costs of application development. Tight integration with Oracle DBMS. Real-time interactive application development.
Project triangle
What are our goals? Reduce risk (= budget) QA cycle and Open Source Software Reduce time APEX framework and new APEX 4.0 features Offer high quality Software factory
Reduce budget Oracle APEX is a free option of the db Architecture can be extended with OSS components Low hanging fruit / quick wins
Quality Assurance cycle Gartner s analysts (Thomas Murphy and David Norton) predict that by 2012 agile development methods will be utilized in 80% of all software development projects. Business validation on requirements Functional validation on developed software Unit tests on PL/SQL code (Continuous integration) UI tests (Selenium)
Continuous integration
Continuous integration
Hudson Build engine Monitoring tool Free!
Selenium Free Firefox plugin Cross browser UI testing Tests are reproduceable
(OSS) Architecture APEX Development Architecture jquery Selenium Hudson Maven Oracle SQL Developer Subversion Apache Tomcat + APEX listener Oracle Data modeler Oracle DB + APEX Framework UI tester Build engine Build manager IDE Versioning control Application Server DM Database
jquery JavaScript framework Less coding, more productivity Adds very visual features Some examples: jquery Accordion AJAX zoom
What are our goals? Reduce risk (= budget) QA cycle and Open Source Software Reduce time APEX framework and new APEX 4.0 features Offer high quality Software factory
Reduce time Reduce project ramp up time Adds little value, costs a lot Most projects use the same basic setup Emphasis on reuse from other projects Automatic generation of basic components APEX framework Hosted on apex.oracle.com CSS is fully customized Serves as master application for new projects Reduces ramp up time drastically
IAB APEX Framework Scenario Basic setup of a project (table auditing, error messaging, ) Starting point = generated ddl-script from data modeler
IAB APEX Framework Demo IAB APEX Framework
New APEX 4.0 features APEX advisor Create daily scheduled job Dynamic actions Plug-ins Integrated jquery
What are our goals? Reduce risk (= budget) QA cycle and Open Source Software Reduce time APEX framework and new APEX 4.0 features Offer high quality Software factory
Software factory Assembly line with high software throughput
Software factory Only for Java /.Net? Continuous integration APEX development framework SOFTWARE FACTORY QA cycle
Conclusions Cost-efficient Quality Assurance cycle APEX combined with Open Source Software Fast APEX framework: minimize project ramp up & maintenance time New APEX 4.0 features (more declarative, dynamic actions, ) High Quality Software factory (requirements, PM, code, release management)
One final thought A hammer doesn t build a house, the person swinging the hammer does. It s all in how you use the tools available.
Questions