People are frustrated about @OracleADF @JDeveloper on social media - "ADF boat has no captain", etc. I agree @Oracle is to blame big time for such lame handling of its own Developer Tools stack. @Oracle please wake up and spend some budget on @OracleADF. Read more:
Oracle VBCS - right now this tool gets the most of Oracle focus. Supposed to offer declarative #JavaScript development experience in the Cloud. Not well received by the community. Are there any VBCS customers, please respond if yes?
Oracle APEX - comes with a very strong community (mostly backed by DB folks). But is not strategic for Oracle. More likely will be used by PL/SQL guys then by Java or Web developers.
Oracle JET - highly promoted by Oracle. Set of opensource #JavaScript libs, glued by Oracle layer. Nice, but can't be used as a direct replacement for @OracleADF, JET is UI layer only. Oracle folks often confuse community by saying - Oracle JET is a great option to replace ADF
Oracle Forms - still alive, but obviously can't be strategic Oracle platform. A few years ago, Oracle was promoting Forms modernization to @OracleADF
Summary - Oracle Developer tools offering is weak. Lack of Oracle investment into development tools - makes Oracle developers community shrink.
Oracle VBCS - right now this tool gets the most of Oracle focus. Supposed to offer declarative #JavaScript development experience in the Cloud. Not well received by the community. Are there any VBCS customers, please respond if yes?
Oracle APEX - comes with a very strong community (mostly backed by DB folks). But is not strategic for Oracle. More likely will be used by PL/SQL guys then by Java or Web developers.
Oracle JET - highly promoted by Oracle. Set of opensource #JavaScript libs, glued by Oracle layer. Nice, but can't be used as a direct replacement for @OracleADF, JET is UI layer only. Oracle folks often confuse community by saying - Oracle JET is a great option to replace ADF
Oracle Forms - still alive, but obviously can't be strategic Oracle platform. A few years ago, Oracle was promoting Forms modernization to @OracleADF
Summary - Oracle Developer tools offering is weak. Lack of Oracle investment into development tools - makes Oracle developers community shrink.
12 comments:
APEX "...is not strategic for Oracle". Why do you say that? Is this solely your opinion?
Joel
On oracle apex (at least), you are dead wrong.
Joel, this is not my opinion. This is what Oracle PM's (obviously not from APEX team) say (not in public talks) about APEX.
Nothing against APEX. Oracle Developers community is concerned about Oracle Development tools strategy, see many people comments in my LinkedIn thread on the same topic - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6549539082974842881
Oracle APEX right now probably is the single best-adopted development tool product from Oracle. That's great. But probably there is a competition between Oracle products and that's why those mixed messages are coming.
Regards,
Andrejus
Andrejus,
There are different tools for different developers and skill sets. APEX is one, Visual Builder is another.
With respect to APEX "not strategic for Oracle", I've heard that for many years. It's wishful thinking by some. But it's difficult to argue with results.
I think you touched on a key point. You said APEX has a "very strong community". People, in general, don't get excited about a tool, right? People get excited about being *successful* with a tool - delivering solutions. That's why the APEX community is so strong. Thus, I chuckle when I see these comments about "not strategic". Clearly, the thousands and thousands of both *internal* customers and external customers must be wrong, right? :)
I can't speak for all tools from Oracle. But with respect to APEX, investment continues to grow, and at an accelerated place.
Joel
Yes, APEX community is great. Also, it is awesome to see how APEX PM team is passionate and motivated about the product. I wish other Oracle product teams would be the same.
We don't work with APEX (mainly because of the historical focus on ADF), so I can't comment on the number of APEX customers - don't have details on that. But judging by the strength of the community, there is a healthy number.
Other Oracle Developer tools communities are shrinking, and this is not my subjective opinion (I refer to LinkedIn thread mentioned above).
Andrejus,
The next APEX Alpe Adria conference will be on April 24, 2020 in Maribor, Slovenia. I encourage you to please consider attending. It's only a single day and it's close by, so you don't have too much to lose.
Joel
Sorry, but I should have included in this in my most recent comment - the URL for that conference in Maribor will be: https://aaapeks.info.
Joel
Thanks Joel, one of us should definitely attend it, I bookmarked this APEX event.
Regards,
Andrejus
How do you think about JET + VBCS + APEX altogether in the "CLOUD"? It has no direct database connection, no need to know the table structure as same as ADFbc. APEX can take the role of the exposed Webservice version of ADFbc.
Gilbert,
I dont have a goal in this post to compare Oracle products or tell one is better than another, I only express the common sentiment in Oracle community about Oracle Development tools in general.
To talk about ADF BC - REST web service comes standard with ADF BC REST functionality, you dont need APEX to expose REST - ADF BC can do it too. VBCS internally is already based on ADF BC backend and ADF BC services, there is no need for VBCS to use APEX as backend. VBCS doesn't have "direct" DB connection, it provides VBCS Business Objects (hidden ADF BC backend functionality).
All that said, my concern is elsewhere - Oracle Development community (perhaps except APEX) part is shrinking. People are losing their jobs and need to move to other technologies.
Agree, Oracle is losing development ecosystem since the cloud technology platform is getting popular because Oracle was late to make an Oracle-friendly DevOps community.
BTW, I can explain why I think APEX is a good option for the customer who wants to develop/migrate their applications. Recent development pattern is a composition of microservices on cloud technologies. Many application developers just want to have simple DBaaS or object storage, not to have RDBMS anymore.
Besides from new development, a migrating on-prem application has a big huddle of the legacy data model which is based on RDBMS technology. The SQL based VO is one of them. Practically, I would like to say it is the "PL/SQL based VO" rather than saying SQL based VO since many customers had been implemented core data processing/calculation logic in a single PL/SQL in the VO.
Most customers may not be able to migrate some significant PL/SQL module because of the high cost of the result verification. This could be a showstopper in the project. I would like to suggest to leverage APEX and ORDS on this case, they can get the JSON result from Oracle DBaaS. Then they can continue the project.
Yes, thats true - many customers have business logic in PL/SQL. And to me this is valid approach, DB stays way longer than middleware or UI technology, if business logic stays in PL/SQL layer - less risk during migration between technologies. We have several projects, where they expose business logic through ORDS and then consume it in JS frontend apps.
Thanks for your detail comment, much appreciated.
Andrejus
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