First of all, let me say what a great conference KSCOPE is and what a great group of people attend it. The APEX and ORDS communities show up in force and you won't find a group of professionals that are more open to share their hard-earned knowledge. The purpose of this post is to share some of the things we found interesting that may also be interesting to you. I am sure we have missed a lot of great stuff, but until the recorded sessions are released you will have to make do with our thoughts on the sessions we were able to attend.
Introducing the Oracle RAD Stack
The Oracle Development Team introduced us to the Oracle RAD Stack.
From apex.oracle.com: "The Oracle RAD stack is an inclusive technology stack based on three core components: Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS), Oracle APEX, and Oracle Database".
There is no new technology here but creating a logo and a compelling story for these technologies will help in attracting new developers and customers to APEX and ORDS. It will also give the existing community a catchy logo to identify with.
From apex.oracle.com: "The Oracle RAD stack is an inclusive technology stack based on three core components: Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS), Oracle APEX, and Oracle Database".
There is no new technology here but creating a logo and a compelling story for these technologies will help in attracting new developers and customers to APEX and ORDS. It will also give the existing community a catchy logo to identify with.
APEX Automation
Automation is everywhere in technology these days and it was certainly there in full force at KSCOPE this year. Three areas that stood out for us were in testing automation, continuous integration (CICD) and Low Code.
Testing
In testing, one open source tool that stood out was the APEX Test Automation Framework (ATAF). ATAF queries APEX Metadata for information about the Apps you are testing and allows you to build test scripts that generate Selenium code. The tool then allows you to deploy that selenium code to Cloud Based Selenium Grids which will run the tests and record results. Having an automated testing solution allows you to greatly increase the number of tests you can run and removes much of the pain and cost from regression testing.
Continuous Integration / Delivery
There was more than one presentation on Jenkins this year. Jenkins is an open source tool that offers a simple way to set up a continuous integration or continuous delivery environment for almost any combination of languages and source code repositories using pipelines, as well as automating other routine development tasks. While Jenkins doesn’t eliminate the need to create scripts for individual steps, it does give you a faster and more robust way to integrate your entire chain of build, test, and deployment tools than you can easily build yourself.
Low Code
Oracle again demonstrated Application Blueprints. Application Blueprints are APEX's Low Code solution. Building from last year, this technology now allows you to create simple applications directly from your data model. This makes Quick SQL in conjunction with Application Blueprints a powerful combination. Low Code is certainly an area of focus for the APEX team and we expect to see more in this area in upcoming releases.
Testing
In testing, one open source tool that stood out was the APEX Test Automation Framework (ATAF). ATAF queries APEX Metadata for information about the Apps you are testing and allows you to build test scripts that generate Selenium code. The tool then allows you to deploy that selenium code to Cloud Based Selenium Grids which will run the tests and record results. Having an automated testing solution allows you to greatly increase the number of tests you can run and removes much of the pain and cost from regression testing.
Continuous Integration / Delivery
There was more than one presentation on Jenkins this year. Jenkins is an open source tool that offers a simple way to set up a continuous integration or continuous delivery environment for almost any combination of languages and source code repositories using pipelines, as well as automating other routine development tasks. While Jenkins doesn’t eliminate the need to create scripts for individual steps, it does give you a faster and more robust way to integrate your entire chain of build, test, and deployment tools than you can easily build yourself.
Low Code
Oracle again demonstrated Application Blueprints. Application Blueprints are APEX's Low Code solution. Building from last year, this technology now allows you to create simple applications directly from your data model. This makes Quick SQL in conjunction with Application Blueprints a powerful combination. Low Code is certainly an area of focus for the APEX team and we expect to see more in this area in upcoming releases.
Mobile
APEX 18.1 deprecates jQuery mobile but introduces a number of new mobile features to the Universal Theme. These include swipe gestures (care of hammer.js), mobile tabbed menus, sticky buttons, reflow reports and column selector reports. Along with the responsive nature of Universal Theme, these provide the basics for building some pretty impressive mobile Apps. These features were demonstrated by Shakeeb Raman from the APEX development team with his demo movie App which was stunning!
If you factor in the emergence of browser technologies that enable Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) we are fast approaching the time when we don't need to rely on containerization to deploy mobile web apps.
If you factor in the emergence of browser technologies that enable Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) we are fast approaching the time when we don't need to rely on containerization to deploy mobile web apps.
Oracle Database 18c XE
The current version of the Oracle XE database is a free to use (with limited functionality) version of the Oracle Database. The last version released was based on 11g R2. It seems that the long-awaited successor to this version is now imminent. While the CPU, memory and storage constraints (1 CPU, 2GB RAM and 12GB Disk) do not change much, the 18C version will come with all the bells and whistles that the Enterprise Edition has. This in addition to having the ability to create up to 4 pluggable databases, makes 18C a game changer. There was even a hint that an XE version would be part of the annual release cycle. With this release, RAD stack developers can finally replicate locally the same environment that they are deploying to in production.
We believe this new release of Oracle XE, which is free to use (even in production), opens the door for some new and creative open source products/solutions.
We believe this new release of Oracle XE, which is free to use (even in production), opens the door for some new and creative open source products/solutions.
Exadata Express
We learned that the Cloud based Exadata Express offering will eventually move to the Oracle Autonomous Database. This should help maintain Exadata Express as a compelling Cloud based RAD stack environment.
While I am on the subject of the Oracle Autonomous Database, Mike Hichwa from Oracle shared the following interesting factlet: To test the automated indexing functionality of the autonomous database, Oracle dropped all of the indexes on a NetSuite ERP environment. They then let the autonomous database autogenerate indexes and performance returned to within 2% of the manually tuned environment. Given this is a pre-production release of the database, we can expect even better in the production version.
While I am on the subject of the Oracle Autonomous Database, Mike Hichwa from Oracle shared the following interesting factlet: To test the automated indexing functionality of the autonomous database, Oracle dropped all of the indexes on a NetSuite ERP environment. They then let the autonomous database autogenerate indexes and performance returned to within 2% of the manually tuned environment. Given this is a pre-production release of the database, we can expect even better in the production version.
The REST
- APEX Static File CDN Oracle will start hosting APEX static files on a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This would not only remove some of the burden of hosting these files from your Tomcat and ORDS server but should also significantly improve performance for users located long distances from your data center.
- APEX MOOC Oracle plans to start an APEX massively open on-line course (MOOC) in FY 2018. This will help bring on the next generation of APEX developers.
- New APEX Certifications For those of you who enjoy exams, APEX certifications are coming back in FY 2018.
- Near Zero downtime APEX upgrades are also on the horizon. With APEX releases coming fast and furious this will be a big help to service level agreements. In fact, this functionality is being prompted largely by Oracle's need to maintain SLAs in the cloud.
Attending conferences takes time and money. KSCOPE 18 was time and money well spent. We are already looking forward to KSCOPE 2019 in Seattle!
On a related note, an ODTUG membership gives you access to a lot of the sessions. So, if you are not a member of ODTUG then why not?
On a related note, an ODTUG membership gives you access to a lot of the sessions. So, if you are not a member of ODTUG then why not?
Author
Jon Dixon (Co-Founder JMJ Cloud)
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