Likelihood to Recommend The speed of development from concept, through development and delivery of the end product is so impressive [with Alpha Anywhere]. There is an impressive array of genies and helper functions meaning that you can focus on what matters, the end user experience. It is not a "No code" solution but it is a very impressive "low code" solution which allows detailed access under the hood to tweak the applications to your own needs and the needs of your clients.
Read full review It is appropriate for database application development supporting data driven processes, online transaction processing, BI/reports/analytics ... for addressing about any business data processing need I can think of. Oracle Application Express is fantastic for creating beautiful rich user interfaces with support for all major browsers rendering well on a range of devices. It is less appropriate for applications requiring native low level access to device peripherals and is less appropriate for applications that must execute offline without network/internet connection to supporting application and database servers.
Read full review Pros Our company had been creating small business applications since the 1980's, when we used DBase IV (don't laugh... that's what was available). Then, we got more "sophisticated" with Microsoft Access. Clearly, we would always be limited with what we can do with those two programs. By accident, during an Internet search, we saw and ad for Alpha Anywhere (back then, it was called Alpha V). After working with the 30 free trial for just two weeks, we retired Access, for good. The best part was Alpha's flexibility in its use of "back end" data tables. That allowed us to use existing Access tables as we redesigned the front-end program (Alpha ships with its own DBF system, but we prefer SQL-Based tables). You can choose, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Access, Paradox (actually, too many to name) for your tables. You can even create links to Excel spreadsheets or QuickBooks Tables. It's outstanding! Alpha allows developers to create very large and very complex programs. However, it's also a great choice for RAD (Rapid Application Development) for those who need to be up and running quickly or for less experienced programmers. Actually, the interface truly allows for "codeless" development of your application (more on that later). That means you can design a fully functional application, without typing a single line of code. They have some examples on their website. My favorite part of Alpha is that it is constantly adding features and functions that allow us to do more with our applications. In fact, one of my biggest problems is that I need more time to learn and practice the added features as fast as they are introduced Prior to Alpha Anywhere, we never considered creating/developing "mobile" applications (for tablets, smartphones, etc.). Alpha created a unique "panel" system that makes those application work great... and allows for the design of very sophisticated Apps. Read full review Easy upgrade path from Forms, allowing reuse of code and a low learning curve for Forms developers. Very quick to develop in. Ideal for prototyping or iterative development which is how we usually work. Comes with cross browser and mobile compatibility out of the box. Easy to incorporate other web technologies. Development environment runs straight from a browser. This has proved to be a life saver when issues crop up on a weekend. Read full review Cons I really enjoyed product when the database was a part of it, less maintenance Converting to the cloud has been challenging Security setup should be simpler, like Softr or Stacker Read full review Perhaps is our problem, since we haven’t explored it deeply, but I think that a better portability to mobile devices would help the adoption of APEX. Applications weren’t as light as we thought, and we had to move the APEX server to the same data center where our data base was running, due to performance issues. When we started, we supposed that that situation would not be an issue. At least in Argentina and Brazil, you can not find as many programmers with experience in APEX as you can find with other technologies. Read full review Likelihood to Renew I felt very comfortable using Oracle Application Express from the start. I designed my data model and quickly developed the basic CRUD pages for master tables. Then I designed the main functionality and was able to test and deploy it in a couple of days work. I will probably share the app with other members of the team and continue adding some features in the short term.
Read full review Usability its easy to use as a developer and applications designed using apex are easy and intuitive to use as an end user. Even non-coders can build good applications, the more code you can write the more you can enhance the application but you can get up and running quickly with almost no technical know how.
Read full review Support Rating Very active and knowledgeable community support includes quick and helpful responses from the Oracle employees on the product development team. I've never had to raise an official support request - everything is dealt with via forums and user groups - or via direct emails. The supposrt commuinty is one of the great things about Apex.
Read full review Implementation Rating Using it on the cloud is really simple, the entire process of configuring and provisioning an
Oracle Database takes only a few minutes (less than 10) and then Oracle APEX is already deployed on the database, so you just have to start using it. I would strongly recommend using APEX on Oracle Cloud Free Tier.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Alpha Anywhere is a full-stack IDE. It’s no code and low code, but you can also custom code if you need to. About 10% of our application is no code. 80% is low code and 10% is custom code.
Read full review Obviously Oracle Application Express cannot replace WebLogic in terms of creating domains but it is not designed to do that. We can use this tool to prototype and later develop a product using the
Oracle WebLogic platform. We selected Oracle Application Express due to the ease of learning, and not having to buy licenses to use it.
Read full review Return on Investment Allows for a great return on investment since you can quickly become very productive and complete more projects and applications in a shorter period of time with hand coding and the normal programming headaches of PHP, C#, Angular, etc. You can afford to take on more and smaller projects since they will require far less time to complete than more traditional development environments. Alpha Anywhere is continuously updated coming out with new features and capabilities on essentially a daily basis. Continuous improvement and frequent updates allows you to always stay ahead of the curve and competitors. Alpha Anywhere allows you to offer lower cost solutions that will be completed in less time and that will be much easier to support and maintain. Read full review In the mid-size organization, we had a BI tool that had a significant license cost involved. With Oracle back-end we were able to switch to APEX and move all reporting at literally zero cost. For Oracle PL/SQL users the learning curve is very quick and easy, there are ready templates that you can start with and eventually create complex reports. You can track authorization and authentication on data editing and usage. High performance as it is native oracle sql codes. Centralized data capturing, makes your datawarehouse writable for lookup tables or reference tables. Read full review ScreenShots Alpha Anywhere Screenshots