The power of Oracle APEX and GenAI for businesses

Low-code programming has been growing in popularity for years because it helps organizations deploy innovative applications quickly, without the cost and complexity of manual coding. Now adoption is picking up steam because low code is ideally suited to usher in a new generation of AI-powered applications.

Enter the latest release of Oracle APEX, the popular low-code development platform used by 850,000 developers in organizations across many industries. The new APEX 24.1 release, introduced in June 2024, features dozens of enhancements, including three that stand out: APEX AI Assistant, which enables natural language queries, a “create application” assistant that generates blueprints with the attributes you want, and conversational AI dialogs for creating natural language user experiences.

I’ll go deeper into the many new capabilities of this new release, but here’s a quick summary: APEX 24.1 uses AI to build AI.

It’s the latest example of how Oracle is helping business and technology teams bypass the inherent complexity of AI development with cloud-based tools that are designed with simplicity in mind. APEX 24.1, which runs in the cloud, is available in several versions, including an always-free service and as a built-in feature of all variants of Oracle Database.

APEX has been around for more than 20 years, and Oracle estimates the platform has been used to build 21 million applications. That makes it one of the most widely adopted low-code development environments going, and the company has added powerful new features.

AI assistance for all levels of experience

Low code is similar to no-code development in that both let people who aren’t experienced programmers or software engineers build sophisticated applications. But they’re not the same thing. Low code, as the name implies, uses point-and-click for some or most of the work but can allow for customization using JavaScript or other programming languages. That makes low-code platforms well-suited for developers who want to go beyond what a point-and-click interface can deliver. No code is point-and-click for people with little or no programming experience, such as do-it-yourself business professionals who are software savvy.

Whether used solely as a point-and-click visual application builder or customized with JavaScript, APEX’s biggest value proposition is ease of use, and that’s even more of a benefit now thanks to the new AI-assisted technologies in APEX 24.1.

The power of APEX is that it uses a model called declarative programming, where users create applications based on their intent—in other words, what they seek to create—rather than line-by-line programming. For example, if you want to represent data in spreadsheet format, that’s easily done with a spreadsheet-shaped widget. This kind of declarative, intent-driven programming eliminates a lot of the setup and design work typically required to build complex business applications. That makes this model a major area of focus at Oracle, as explained by Juan Loaiza, executive vice president of mission-critical database technologies, during his keynote presentation at Oracle CloudWorld 2023 (1:14:12).

There’s something for everyone in APEX 24.1. Application creators without a lot of experience will appreciate having the ability to simplify and automate SQL programming or to join tables, steps that typically require database system know-how. Even experienced developers will find that APEX’s ability to, say, remember and automatically complete table names or add analytics functions makes their job easier.

“It helps developers of all skill levels,” says Mike Hichwa, Oracle senior vice president, software development.

A scalable application development paradigm

Low-code development excels at helping build apps but traditionally was useful only when a single person was building, testing, and deploying the software. Not anymore. APEX is surprisingly adept at larger-scale projects that may employ a team of developers. Case in point: An application built with APEX for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention handled one million users during a busy four-hour usage window. And Oracle is using APEX to build next-gen healthcare applications, such as one for self-service patient registration for its Oracle Health business.

Much of today’s low-code work goes into building and extending software-as-a-service offerings. To help with this, APEX includes prebuilt adapters and templates to facilitate cloud and hybrid connectivity.

“There’s increased interest in using Oracle APEX to build out SaaS,” says Hichwa. “Low code started out as a productivity tool for departmental lines of business, then it mutated to the enterprise due to its many benefits. It’s a better paradigm.”

The fact that APEX is built on and runs within Oracle Database gives it fast, low-latency performance and the kind of enterprise-class functionality—debugging, security, governance, and more—that global organizations require. APEX also works with JSON Relational Duality Views, an innovative technology I’ve written about before, and server-side JavaScript, both of which are the kind of robust data platform capabilities that make Oracle, Oracle. These are all proof points that APEX can be used for more than departmental use cases. Moreover, Hichwa adds that some large customers have hundreds of programmers who use APEX for at least some of the work they do.

Creating conversational user experiences

The new AI-assisted capabilities in APEX 24.1 could grab the attention of an even wider audience.

“AI really transforms and takes the tedium out of building apps,” Hichwa told me during a demo, where he created an app that used faceted search using public school data. Faceted search lets you narrow down your results using filters. Companies can also use APEX to easily create and implement interactive reports, calendars, and other business processes and workflows.

Much of the vastly improved experience comes in the form of natural language support. The newly introduced AI Assistant in APEX 24.1 uses natural language prompts to automate creating and debugging SQL queries. And a new capability called Create App Assistant provides application blueprints from natural language prompts. Simply specify the attributes you want, and they become part of the blueprint.

Another natural language innovation is the ability to create applications that enable conversational user experiences. This is done using the built-in Conversational AI dialogs component.

APEX developers can do all of the above using their large language model (LLM) of choice, including those running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI, OpenAI, and Cohere. For projects that require deeper integration with GenAI services, APEX includes an AI API that can be accessed via JavaScript—an example of how low code can offer more power than simple no-code tools for those who wish to take advantage of it.

AI applications created with APEX 24.1 are a natural fit with other elements of Oracle’s AI tech stack. At the top of the list is the recently introduced Oracle AI Vector Search, a built-in component of Oracle Database 23ai. Using APEX 24.1 and Oracle AI Vector Search together, organizations can now build apps with natural language capabilities that can be used for similarity search.

Even better at collaborative development

As mentioned earlier, APEX 24.1 makes it easier than ever for a team of developers to work together on complex business applications. A collaborative feature called Application Working Copies, which creates a copy of the app for ongoing development then highlights the changes that have been made, is perfect for team development. Working Copies lets developers lock sections of the code they’re working on, and flag changes introduced by other members of the development team, making it easy to reconcile differences between versions.

The long list of other new capabilities in APEX 24.1 includes PDF generation, support for Microsoft Word templates, and accessibility-specific help text in APEX’s Page Designer, which creates visual interfaces. The workflow engine features a new workflow dashboard. And project leaders who initiate tasks can now approve or reject what gets submitted.

Taken together, the new AI-assisted capabilities and other enhancements in APEX 24.1 open the door to new ways of building applications—faster and easier—by an even wider range of developers. Best of all, the end results are truly next-gen AI applications.

John Foley is editor of the Cloud Database Report and a vice president with Method Communications.

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