Oracle Apex, Dead on Arrival?

Warning: Rant follows! The views and opinions expressed here are explicitly my own. Subjective, prejudiced and factless content ahead, best consumed with a pinch of salt (and some Tequila if you are in the mood).


Here in Norway, the Oracle community is just starting to open its eyes to Apex. I have been lobbying Apex internally in my company for quite some time now. Given the latest releases, this should have made my job easier (and the coming version 4.0 even more so). Apex has matured in many ways, but most noticeably in terms of functionality and community adoption. So what is driving me up the wall?

The long, long time ago
The major part of the customers I have worked with, started their relationship with Oracle by buying an Oracle database. To a greater or lesser degree, most have expanded their use of Oracle products. Having worked most of my time with rich back office applications in various domains and a number of development tools, I have witnessed the investments made by customers into their applications (both in terms of time and money).

Changing client technologies combined with a consistently performant database in the cellar, has made some pretty impressive database applications. Whole business processes have been modeled, implemented and evolved (and continue to evolve) in the database for quite some time now, and the companies have gained in-house database competence as a natural result.

Enter APEX
Along comes Apex, a PL/SQL based RAD tool , which actually seems to live up to the "RAD"-label and has the ability to flip code around to satisfy the most exotic  business needs. At the same time also embracing both KISS and the fat database paradigm.

In particular, companies heavily invested in database applications, often in combination with Oracle Forms clients, should see the benefits of Apex. Reuse of code, reuse of competence, and getting their pennies worth of already invested time and money. So what is stopping them?

The Case and the Choice
Based on one need or another, the business wants to expand their existing applications; what client tools are available in the Oracle sphere? There are several options, but most prominent (for the time being, anyway) is ADF and Apex. What to choose depends on a number of things, but I believe the most important in this phase is not to apply your silver bullet “just because”.

This is a topic in itself, so I will short circuit the discussion, and narrow it down to this:

A company wants to implement some back office system based on an existing database application. The application is of "medium" complexity, consisting of registration forms, case evaluation support, reporting and some integrating with other systems. About 10 concurrent users. The IT department has most of its skills in PL/SQL and SQL.

You cannot build a system based on that information, I agree. You cannot make a valid recommendation on a single tool based on that information, I agree. But this is the same amount of information available to Oracle sales representatives as well, and (in Norway at least) the answer is ADF nine out of ten times (actually, I have never heard Apex recommended, but I am giving the benefit of the doubt here).

What do they know that I do not?
How can they consistently answer ADF? Is Apex going to die soon? If I were a customer, I would shy away from Apex hearing this from Oracle itself. Heck, I might even shy away from Apex, I have to make a living too.

In many cases, I am convinced Apex is not just a viable choice, but also the best choice for the customer. But how can I justify that to the customer that Apex is the way to go, when the software vendor actually says something else? If I was a customer, I would be reluctant to use Apex, to say the least.

The road ahead
I do not know where to take it from here, hence the rant. That is the long and the short of it.

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.