I’ve noticed that Oracle APEX rarely comes up in developer discussions, especially compared to modern frameworks and cloud native stacks.
But in enterprise environments, it seems to handle data heavy applications, internal tools, and workflows surprisingly well, especially when paired with a solid database setup.
From what I’ve seen, it reduces a lot of the overhead you would normally have with full stack development while still being scalable if designed properly.
Curious to hear from others. Are people actually using APEX in production, or is it still considered niche?
I hate to admit it, but I do work with Oracle Apex quite a bit. 15 years of experience to be precise. I’ve created several big applications with it which are running in production right now.
And still, if I had the choice I’d avoid it like the plague. This is 100% vendor lock in with very little benefit.
The only reason I’m using it is because it was already in use when I came into the picture and there was some know how in the team already. But guess what, those people left and now I’m the only one who really knows what’s going on and has meaningful knowledge and experience in PLSQL, which you absolutely need if you want to create anything non trivial with Apex.
And of course finding people who actually know PLSQL at the level required to maintain those systems is very’hard. Who is going to learn an archaic procedural language which will only ever work within an Oracle database? Nobody within their right mind.
We tried introducing several rookies into this - all of them run away.
Another big reason to avoid it is that if you ever have the need to do something which is outside of what the generator accounts for, you will be fighting the framework constantly to still make it work and pray to the gods that no Apex update will break whatever you had to hack in.
There is really no reason any sane company should introduce this. It is not cheap. It is not easy outside of trivial things. The vendor lock in is huge.
Avoid!
I remember a similar experience. So much time was wasted just keeping some small app limping along with security patches because no one knew or wanted to know how it worked.
Pair that with oracle’s notoriously useless support which always required you to be on the latest patch before even providing an answer and it made the decision to leave it in the rearview mirror the easiest part of some modernization effort.
License: Oracle Technical Network License (proprietary)
No, thanks
Sorry mate I ain’t touching anything with oracle in its name
Fine to continue using it if you have it, but you would have to be crazy to start using any of their stuff if starting from scratch!
Try not to get hired by any large company, otherwise you might find you need to change your mind.
I’ve worked on a handful of large companies that did their damndest to never touch Oracle because of their licensing and reputation.
My organization used Oracle when I started but eventually phased it out. Good move.
I’ve worked in large companies that didn’t use anything oracle, also worked in one that used oracle db and that’s it, I think that oracle is pretty north america specific.
My opinions will not change but i’d work on it for 200k a year
The are plenty of large companies that don’t use oracle.
Nobody’s going to point out this obvious shill with just one post?
Fuck Oracle. Fuck Larry Ellison. Fuck this fake OP.
Hey I use Apex on Salesforce, does that count in this context?
Apex is part of its native stack and it works good enough, I would say that it is mainly because their database is really solid as you said.
