Oracle Application Express (APEX) Reviews

Oracle APEX provides a fast web page for any application or dashboard, enabling users to create ad hoc reports.

The valuable features are charts, reports, and search engines.

The solution's layout could be improved for report generation to allow more configuration.

I have been using Oracle APEX for 15 years.

I rate the solution’s stability a ten out of ten.

The solution’s scalability is not high. 50-60 online users are using this solution.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support is very good.

Positive

The initial setup is neither easy nor hard. I rate it three or four out of ten.

We must set up more than five tools to run the Oracle APEX application, including the database, assets, API publisher, Application Express, web logies, and several tools.

The deployment depends on the project and can be handled by one person. It takes less than one month for a single project or another month for other projects.

The deployment process is the same as for other applications. It typically involves analysis, implementation, coding, database package development, design, and front-end development.

The solution is cheap. It's a free solution.

I rate the solution's pricing a six or seven out of ten.

Oracle APEX is a good solution to create web applications quickly and easily, with many options.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

In some cases, it is a difficult tool. However, we have found that Oracle is more of a database and not a good tool for application development. As a result, we are currently facing some challenges, and we have not received enough help from the community. We are working hard to find solutions.

We had developed a CRM for the public and companies, and we were facing a few problems. The first problem was encrypting the customer's data so that it could not be seen. The second problem was integration, which was not as easy as Salesforce, even though we are also a partner of Salesforce. Salesforce is much easier to integrate compared to Oracle APEX. And the third challenge we faced was with the UI.

These are some of the challenges I am currently facing. We have been investing a lot of time and money into Oracle Apex. However, we are facing difficulties in integrating it with third-party applications. For example, if we want to integrate a payment gateway or accounting tool like Zero or QuickBooks. We are struggling to find a solution to this. Additionally, we want to integrate AI-based chatbots that can accept and create records through voice commands. We were considering working with Oracle APEX, but we may not be able to test it.

Databases are the most valuable feature in Oracle APEX for me. The database is super easy to use for creating tables.

The most important thing, in my opinion, is that it should allow end-users to create their own custom fields. For example, if you are my customer and you want to create custom fields, you should be able to do that yourself.

Secondly, it should be easy to map fields with other objects like CRM. If you are creating custom fields in the lead and want to create a few custom fields going further on the account contact opportunity, the end customer should be able to do this themselves rather than depending on us every time.

In the next release, we would like to see easy integration with third-party applications. Currently, Oracle is lacking big time in the marketplace. If you look at Salesforce, they have more than four thousand applications that you can easily download and configure with their platform. On the other hand, Oracle Apex has a limited marketplace, with only a few companies offering basic applications. Moreover, the existing marketplace applications are not fancy or AI-based. AI is a big thing, and Oracle is currently working on it.

I have been using this solution for three years. We are using version 22.5.

It is a stable solution. I would rate the stability a seven out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of Oracle APEX a four out of ten. Oracle is more of a database-oriented solution and is not very flexible in app development.

We have only received support from MaxApex people, who have been pretty helpful. Sometimes we get stuck with configuration issues, and they advise us on how to resolve them. They also showed us how to encrypt our data. However, if Oracle APEX has a professional community, it would be great to get more help because no company in the world has a UI like the one we have in our CRM.

We haven't received any support from Oracle. We've only received support from MaxApex.

We used Salesforce before. However, we switched to Oracle Application Express because it's not user-based but rather database-oriented. With it, we can create users and set prices based on our preferences rather than being limited by Salesforce's CRM options. Someone from an Oracle background suggested we try it out during our initial phase, and it was super easy for us to create pages, layouts, and fields. However, we need help as we move forward.

The initial setup was straightforward. However, as we started doing more development work, we faced a lot of challenges. I rate the initial setup at eight on a scale of one to ten.

Down the road, at a later stage, I would rate it a two or three at maximum. The initial setup was easy, but as the complexity of the project increased, we encountered several difficulties. Currently, we only have two people who take care of maintenance and development. We have slowed down our development since we have been doing this for the past three years.

The deployment was done in-house since we have our own team of developers who took care of it. The deployment didn't take much time because MaxApex was really good, and they helped us in different areas. We have deployed it in the cloud version and used MaxApex as our cloud provider. We contacted MaxApex, and they provided us with enough space on the cloud. The rest of the deployment was handled by our technical team. Moreover, we only needed two experienced people who help us deploy on the cloud.

I would rate it around an eight in terms of price, with one being low and ten being high.

We only tried Salesforce. Salesforce has a platform called Force.com, but there was a limitation on the number of objects we could create. If we had to create more than ten objects, Salesforce would start charging twenty-five dollars per user per month. If we wanted to create an unlimited number of objects, Salesforce would charge a hundred dollars per user per month. As we were targeting a market with customers who may not have a big budget, we were trying to find a more cost-effective solution. So we were looking for a more affordable and cost-effective solution for these customers.

I would rate this product as a five out of ten, right in the middle. Number one, it is easy to scale for simple matters. However, when it comes to complex development, it can be challenging and time-consuming.

Our primary use case is for human resources. We use it as an application for human resources for the Ministry of Electricity. We also use it for the complaint management system, for collecting the complaints from customers about electricity, and tracking these kinds of requests.

One of the most valuable features is that we can develop everything locally and deploy it for different kinds of operators in different locations, so we can do our job in one piece. The benefit of that is that others can use these applications. They connect to the internet to do these kinds of applications based on the permissions for those users.

Developing based on a web-based application with APEX or another language is more simple and costly.

Connecting with Oracle and the relation with Oracle at the database as a procedure needs improvement. 

The front-end development that's looking for HTML, Java, C++, etc also needs improvement. In order to get more out of APEX, there should be more training courses to help beginners start from A to Z. When I started with APEX, I focused on the first part, the relation between database procedure, and later I found I needed more learning courses for the HTML. There should be more training or books looking at the relationship between APEX and Oracle, not between APEX and HTML, CSL, or JavaScript. In order to go more and more with APEX, it needs to start with HTML, CSL, JavaScript, and web development.

The main drawback is that APEX doesn't talk with other databases. It would be great for the tool if you could combine it with different open-source databases. 

I have been working with Oracle for around ten years. 

It's stable but I experience instability with it when I shifted from version 3.2 to 4.2. There were some errors in the database. I couldn't understand why but after searching I found a solution. But it works now. 

Stability has been for seven or eight years. 

We have three to five developers using this solution.

I worked with Java and before Java, Visual Basic from Microsoft. The other person in the Ministry of Electricity is still using Access for Microsoft, Visual Basic, .NET or C#, SQL Server as the database, and PHP. Different people in my company work with different solutions.

The initial setup wasn't easy or complex, it was somewhere in the middle. We deployed it ourselves.

I purchased the database when we started the project with Oracle. I supported the analysis for one year, but after one year we couldn't pay more for the support. We haven't had an issue with maintenance. 

APEX is an open-source platform. I'm busy with the application. It is easy to maintain the application in order to go further with more versions of APEX. It has a different kind of database. Data Point 2.1, is the version that I got from Oracle.

Oracle one of the most expensive databases in the world.

In order to go with APEX, you need to know everything about Oracle as a database, starting from a secure fundamental as the beginning, PL/SQL, and administration of the database. You have to know about HTML5, JavaScript query, and jQuery.

I would rate APEX a seven out of ten. The drawback of APEX is the relation between APEX and Oracle, there is no relation between APEX and other databases. It's very good for learning APEX and it is stable. 

Your company has to understand how to invest in it. It is a wonderful database. If it's Oracle, it is the best one in the world. So when we invest in people, invest in Oracle, we will get our results. Everything is available and everything can be developed with any applications. 

Our business applications include healthcare, administrative, and planning tools. The environment consists of on-premise databases with an Oracle ORDS Tomcat stack and other JavaScript utilities on top of Linux Virtual Machines. There are legacy solutions, such as Oracle 11 with APEX 5.1 and Oracle 19 with APEX 20. These solutions have proven to be quite stable, but you need to do proper planning and profiling of heavy database transactions for more significant queries and heavy transaction processing.

Oracle APEX has proven to be a solid "low-code" solution that works quite well for simple and complex scenarios of data-intensive applications. Integrating the tool with the robust underlying Oracle Database allows a team to quickly create and deploy functionality iteratively. Running the tool on top of Linux-based virtual machines can slow things down, but the work gets done, and using the Oracle XE editions for some clients has been an adequate solution for POCs or even small non-critical production apps.

Oracle APEX's reporting features are simple yet powerful. The ability to quickly create CRUD screens has simplified many RAD discovery processes, while the APEX environment allows the product owners and dev teams to quickly understand the complex solutions and employ usage statistics to identify areas requiring improvement. The option to add external JavaScript tools in screen development enables the development of complicated mobile or web usage scenarios in rare cases where the APEX UX  is not enough.

Oracle should implement vertical and horizontal data segmentation in APEX's security framework, so Dev teams don't need to do any heavy lifting in the APEX screens. This is a common issue in enterprise apps. It would be nice to seamlessly integrate Git repositories into the development process since the current solution can result in overlapping work or an eventual overwrite. The provided example apps are great, but they could benefit from some added documentation in the "explanation screens".

I've been using Oracle APEX since 2006.

Oracle Apex is stable.

Oracle Apex scales well, but you need a good admin who knows how to work with DBA and Linux.

Oracle support has room for improvement.

Neutral

Setting up APEX requires Oracle and Linux admin experience.

We implemented APEX with an in-house team.

APEX is free, but Oracle Database is not.

I rate Oracle APEX eight out of 10. It's a good tool that needs more promotion, particularly the cloud solution.

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.

I have some hands-on experience with the tool, but it is not too much. I just installed it and used it for my work. I used the tool for an inventory project, and after some research, my company decided to go somewhere else.

The solution's most valuable features stem from the fact that the tool's performance was not bad at all. We wanted to use the tool for faster development because it helps us avoid and omit boilerplate codes.

The product's stability has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required.

I have experience with Oracle Application Express (APEX).

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a five to six out of ten.

It is a scalable solution.

Around six or seven developers in our company use the product. In my company, we did some research on the tool with the help of our research and development team.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward. Most Oracle products have a straightforward installation process.

My company doesn't get involved in the tool's deployment phase. My company's project was deployed over Oracle Application Express (APEX).

The product's integration capabilities were okay. I don't have much to say about it.

I don't feel eligible enough to comment on whether I would recommend the product to others.

If other people want the product in some of their projects, they want a solution that can help with fast development and delivery phases while not wanting a very high performance. They can go for Oracle Application Express (APEX) after PoC and MVP to find its suitability.

In my company, we don't use AI with the tool.

The measurable benefits from the use of the product can be seen in areas like SaaS development and SaaS delivery, and I think the features associated with both areas are good in the tool.

I rate the tool a six to seven out of ten.

I would call them small supporting applications, so we use them when we need a web UI for certain users to show data from our environment, mainly in operations.

One of the most valuable features is the ability to build very fast data-driven UIs. Also, those UIs are web-based and don't require any deployment on the user side. We try to avoid complex add-ons or additions, so we stick to the standard features that APEX provides. We also use it for some workflows and to present data out of services or databases.

I think version control can be improved, meaning the ability to track what has changed from the previous version of the application and to see it in standard tools like the code repository. I know in the last versions they were working on it, but I haven't seen it yet. 

The product deployment could be easier. 

In the past, I've thought about dockerization, or the ability to deliver the application as a docker container, and establish the production environment in a job. 

What I would love to see is more integration. I would like to see easier integration into active directory authentication. Also, maybe integration of JavaScript frameworks would resolve some issues.

We have been using APEX for at least eight to ten years.

The solution is highly stable and we have had no issues with it. On a scale of one to five, where one is highly stable and five is not, I would rate it as a one. 

The scalability could be improved. It depends on the use cases. We will never use this solution for a productive environment with 500 to 1000 users because this would be a bit difficult in my opinion. I would say that the scalability for small applications is good, but the scalability for big applications is bad.

About 100 to 150 people are currently using the solution at my company.
We are continuously building small applications, but we don't plan to use this solution to make big applications. It's very use case driven. When we get a use case that is not big and it's easy to create a web-based application, then we use this solution. So we may extend our use of the solution, but we do not plan to migrate anything directly to it.

On a scale of one to five, where one is easy and five is complicated, I would rate the initial setup as a four.

We always lose a lot of time with our outsourcing partner because we don't host the service on our own. This takes some time, so to create the concept for us between the different environments and to do implement it, I would say it takes a minimum of five days.

When you have a licensed database in an Oracle environment, APEX is free.

I would tell those considering this tool that if you have an Oracle environment, it's worth taking a look at. If you don't have an Oracle environment in place, it's the wrong tool. Also, I would tell them to stick to the standard functionalities of APEX and not try to extend it with custom code. We learned that if you stick to the standards the application gives you, it's easy to maintain and it's easy to transfer from one developer to another. If you start to create custom code in hidden areas, it's very hard for the next developer to find the code.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten.

Oracle Application Express (APEX) can be used for anything which requires quick creation of a user interface with user interaction with a database. Sometimes it's used more for reporting, but in many cases, it's for interactive reporting or interactions with the tool to record dates in the database. For example, it can be used for internal use within the company for the testing team to conveniently add test cases. Additionally, it can be used for comprehensive reporting for the financial teams, they can perform some work related to revenue recognition. 

I didn't work with big projects exposed to the public, the use cases were mostly internal platform projects.

The most valuable features of Oracle Application Express (APEX) are the ease and speed of development. Instead of engaging a large team of middleware, front-end, and database engineers, we can have professional look at the front end and have the user interface up and running in a matter of days. However, if you want to go far and implement very custom features, it doesn't require a lot of knowledge of front-end development, such as HTML, JavaScript, or other aspects.

I have been using Oracle Application Express (APEX) for approximately 10 years.

The stability of Oracle Application Express (APEX) is 100 percent. It is highly stable.

Oracle Application Express (APEX) is highly scalable and can serve up to a required number of users. However, I do not have experience with serving more than approximately100 users. I'm always advertising this tool as being scalable. Bring in the shop.oracle.com as an example, because that site is running on Oracle Application Express (APEX), and you can imagine it can serve up to an unlimited number of users. With good hardware behind the solution, it's scalable, but since I don't have direct experience, I'm pretty sure it's scalable to any possible level. My confidence level in that is 90 percent scalable.

I have not had the need to contact technical support because of the number of resources and amount of information available with only a couple of mouse clicks, such as documentation, Q&A, and FAQ, they have a lot of material available. I know that browsing those websites people sometimes face some issues with not having their issue resolved, but this has not been my experience.

Oracle Application Express (APEX) comes with Oracle. The Oracle price itself. I do not know the exact cost. Oracle is flexible on its price. If you overspend on your hardware, then I don't think you will overpay. I heard that Oracle is more expensive than other databases, but when you consider Oracle is the best traditional relational database out there. You get what you pay for.

I rate Oracle Application Express (APEX) a nine out of ten.