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Oracle APEX : Low Budget BI solution with complex functionality and ease of use
November 08, 2017

Oracle APEX : Low Budget BI solution with complex functionality and ease of use

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle Application Express

Oracle Application Express or APEX is a nice front end tool that comes along with your Oracle Enterprise server license. What you need is to install and configure APEX. In my previous work place there was a need for a reporting solution with the ability to have writable reports. Meaning users will see the report and can adjust/change few metrics and data elements. APEX is a great solution that can give a quick and easy to use powerful interface to create data entry form+report. In simple words you have a database table in Oracle and you want it to be exposed to users for reading and editing, Apex can do that. In the current organization i have used this tool to move away from individual Excel spreadsheets to centralized database tables.
  • APEX can help you create complex and powerful reports and drill downs along with the ability to Edit the data on the fly.
  • APEX can be a good replacement for Excel data entry sheets, providing centralized access to table data with authentication.
  • Data entry forms with validations and triggers can be created using your existing Oracle infrastructure, easy to implement and deploy.
  • APEX is a tool that can combine data entry forms and reporting (parent/ child ) using the Oracle tables in your database.
  • Users get the ability to make changes to the forms data in Apex and commit, get to the report page and see the changes in real time.
  • For complex APEX applications you need to be a pro expert in PL/SQL
  • Debugging in APEX can be complicated if there is a logical error. Syntax errors will end up shown as ORA errors
  • Lack of designer interface. Even though you are designing a form you need to do it by means of APEX interface using a series of steps, no UI for design
  • Oracle specific not applicable for other databases
  • 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.
Automation scenario : Suppose there is a user group that maintains Excel or their daily cost data entry. There are 4 users who work on the cost Excel worksheet. It can be individual or a shared excel. Once the data entry is done the data need to be reported in a BI report and distributed. Excel data entry can have fat fingering or typo errors that can cause issues with a report. In this situation we can use APEX and design a form that the 4 users can access at the same time, we can track which user is making what changes and without any delay once the data is committed in the form it can be made available for BI reporting . For small to medium size organization APEX can be used as a low cost BI tool for reporting and forms need, as it is free with the Oracle license.