Google Forms is an app for creating forms and surveys, and is part of Google Apps for Work. The product focuses on ease of use; the interface is similar to a document editor, with drop down lists of options and drag and drop question re-ordering. Users can embed images and video into surveys. Users can also program the question flow with custom logic. Google sends users basic summaries of the survey results automatically, or users can export the raw survey results data and analyze it via…
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Oracle APEX
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Oracle APEX (or Oracle Application Express) is an online low-code application builder that allows users to develop a database-drive application, customize the application's UI, and then give their users access to the application via URL. Oracle APEX includes a suite of pre-built productivity applications and examples, such as a Survey Builder, Bug Tracking, P-Track project management, etc
Google Forms is great for simple surveys, such as quick polls, but any logic beyond conditional pages is not supported. Google Forms is best used when the survey participants have and are permitted to use a Google Account to fill out the form; we ran into issues with hospital IT departments. I don't believe there's a better free tool out there than Google Forms, though.
Based on our organization's experience, Oracle APEX is a versatile and powerful tool, but its suitability depends on specific business needs, technical requirements, and the nature of the application being developed. Scenarios where Oracle APEX fits well: Business Process Automation/Workflows Reporting and Dashboards for Data Analytics AI based systems such as Select AI Chatbots for data insights based on LLMs Native-like Mobile Applications using PWA feature of APEX Scenarios where Oracle APEX may be less appropriate: Very Complex and highly interactive applications Use cases based on a non-oracle Database
Live results: When a user completes the form the results are added instantly.
Easy to create: Google Forms has a simple interface that allows for a wide range of question types. Google will even try to guess the question type based on the question (but this can be overridden).
Answers export to Google Sheets: It is easy to have each response to your form add a row to a Google Sheet, allowing for further analysis or processing.
Ability to automatically collect email addresses within a domain: If you have a form that has been shared with users in your domain, you can set it to automatically collect the users' email addresses without them needing to type it in. Makes checking whether all students have completed the form easy.
Sometimes finding the output -- a Google Sheet with all responses-- is a little difficult. It's also sometimes confusing to figure out how to get back into the Google Form Survey itself.
As always, sharing among an institutional Google account and your personal Google account can be frustrating. You have to make a copy and can't share across the two different accounts very easily.
Can't think of any - the Application Express development team does a fantastic job adopting and supporting emerging trends with each new release.
Requires Oracle RDBMS; i.e., is not portable to other RDBMS platforms. On the surface this may seem like a con but it is as it should be - Oracle database is best RDBMS available and tight integration with Oracle RDBMS promotes creation of reliable performant apps.
I will definitely renew my use of Google Forms because I really like the ease of use and the number of tools that Google forms provide. I also love that I can administer a test in real-time and get results in a timely manner
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.
Overall ease of use for staff, volunteers, and adult learners, and easy to get reports and to share reports via Sheets. As a free tool, it does more than expected. Easy to change the look and brand it to your organization, or just make it more fun, depending on what you want to use it for.
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.
In the years I've used GoogleForms I've never ran into any issues with the reliability or availability. Google is a gigantic company with essentially limitless resources which makes it very easy to trust that I will continue to be able to enjoy the same reliability I've come to know and expect from GoogleForms
One of the things that comes as a benefit of the lack to create complex logic branching and truly custom design is that there isn't lot of room to bog down the software. GoogleForms has always loaded just as fast as my internet service and device would allow it. I'm not sure about front end integrations or integrations into the form itself, as I've never explored it, but on the backend, I've never had any issues with integrations channeling from GoogleForms from the GoogleForms's end of things.
We haven't used much official support for Google Forms. However, because it is so widely used, there are a ton of articles and guides available online to help administrators of varying technical abilities to work through problems that arise. Additionally, Google provides an official support forum where there are discussions with other users as well as Google developers that can help address issues if needed.
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.
Google Forms doesn't really require "implementation": simply log into GDrive and create a survey! You can configure settings per survey to, for example, automatically write responses to a GSheet.
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.
Although both platforms offer similar functionalities, Google Form has a personal advantage and it is the impeccable integration with the different applications of the Google suite, this allows to make use of all of them in a transparent way, which in the work environment allows to perform work efficiently and without affecting the quality of it.
If you are expert in SQL and PLSQL and use Oracle Database, then the best choice is Oracle Application Express. The functionality is already complete and very easy to use, so it's useless to find another tool if you are using Oracle. You don't use Oracle APEX only if: (1) you are using other database than Oracle, and (2) your application load is unpredictable.
GoogleForms lacks the ability for complex logic branching and the ability to truly design it in a custom manner. It's pretty obvious when you land on a GoogleForm that it is in fact a GoogleForm. This rating solely reflects the lack of flexibility which in turn makes it something that wouldn't usually be scaled. That being said, if needing to scale a simple solution, GoogleForms would be up for the job.
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.
