In addition to the more traditional ground-up Java + framework way we build an app at work, we've also been building out small projects with Oracle APEX (Application Express) where it makes sense. If you aren't familiar with APEX, its a surprisingly polished and nice 4GL tool that allows a very RAD approach for building certain types of database-oriented applications that are heavy on data input and reporting. We've also used it to build prototypes that we then threw away and started from scratch after we got feedback from the customer.
Our productivity with APEX is pretty great so I really do have to recommend it to other people who are already Oracle shops. (It requires Oracle Std edition or EE to deploy onto, though I've also read of people making it work with XE.) There are some significant negatives to the tool -- no real concept of source code management, EVERYTHING in your app is stored in an Oracle table or as PL/SQL, also debugging can be really tough at times -- but on the whole, its a nice product. You could give a project to someone (a business analyst, or a junior developer) who is very good with MS Access and they could produce a fairly nice web-enabled database-oriented tool in a matter of a week or two. Just curious if anyone else is using APEX or a similar 4GL tool and what you think about it. I also ran into Servoy (which is AGPL/OSS as of v5.2) recently and have not yet had any time to check it out, but plan to do so soon as it would be nice to be able to run our apps on Postgres or Mysql in some specific cases. Wayne -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
