Tuesday, October 17, 2017

If you're in Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Brazil or Argentina, Oracle APEX is coming to you!


In the first part of November, my colleague David Peake and I are taking the Oracle APEX & Oracle Database Cloud message to a number of Oracle user groups and communities who are graciously hosting us as part of the Oracle Developer Tour Latinoamérica.  These are countries for which there is growing interest in Oracle Application Express, and we wish to help support these groups and aid in fostering their growing APEX communities.

The dates and locations are:
  1. Panamá, November 1, 2017
  2. Colombia, November 2-3, 2017
  3. Ecuador, November 7, 2017
  4. Paraguay, November 8, 2017
  5. Brasil, November 9-10, 2017
  6. Argentina, November 13-14, 2017
You should consider attending one of these conferences if:

  • You're a CIO or manager, and you wish to understand what Oracle Application Express is and if it can help you and your business.
  • You're a PL/SQL developer, and you want to learn how easy or difficult it is to exploit your skills on the Web and in the Cloud.
  • You come from a client/server background and you want to understand what you can do with your skills but in Web development and Cloud development.
  • You're an Oracle DBA, and you want to understand if you can use Oracle Application Express in your daily responsibilities.
  • You know nothing about Oracle Application Express and you want to learn a bit more.
  • You're experienced with Oracle Application Express and you want to learn what's in the future for Oracle APEX.

If you have any interest or questions or concerns (or complaints!) about Oracle Application Express, and you are nearby, we would be very honored to meet you in person and assist in any way we can.  We hope you can make it!

P.S. I couldn't make it to Panamá, but David will be there, so please join him.

Thursday, October 05, 2017

A Great APEX Developer is.....a Full Stack Developer!



I've heard these phrases from customers:

  • Where can I find Oracle APEX developers?  
  • I'm having a tough time filling a vacancy for an APEX developer.  
  • I'm getting pushback from my own management because they say Java developers are much easier to find than APEX developers.

The last comment was from Peter, a potential customer, who recently posted this on Twitter.

Make no mistake about it.  If you go to indeed.com or dice.com or monster.com, you're going to find far more openings for .NET or Java developers than Oracle APEX developers.  But I would like to take a step back and ask - what makes a really great Oracle APEX developer?  Well, a great APEX developer is competent in:

  1. The Oracle Database (installation, setup, tuning, monitoring)
  2. Data modeling
  3. SQL (and SQL tuning)
  4. PL/SQL
  5. User Interface Design
  6. Responsive Design
  7. HTML
  8. CSS
  9. JavaScript
  10. Web applications
  11. Web servers
  12. Web security
  13. Network security
  14. Server administration
  15. Continuous integration
  16. Unit testing
  17. Application Express (APEX) development

...and probably a few more not even listed here.  It's an amazing list of very specific and relatively complicated technologies.  Don't be alarmed if you consider yourself a rockstar developer with APEX and you are competent in less than half of these areas.  I can't really think of anyone on our own Oracle APEX Development team who is intimately familiar with all of these technologies.  A few experts in the APEX community can truly claim to be proficient in all of these areas, but they're finite in number.  If you look at this list of technology areas, you will quickly conclude:

If you're looking for a great APEX developer, you're really looking for a full-stack developer

...and those are pretty rare in the industry.  Let's look at a couple examples.

It's easier to find Java developers than it is APEX developers.  Sure, I agree.  But it's a common misconception that because someone knows .NET or Java (or PHP or Python or Ruby or JavaScript or whatever) that they are competent in elegant and attractive user interface design.  Just because you know a programming language that is commonly used in Web applications has no correlation to you having the ability to create rich and elegant UI.  This is a very rare skill, and one I see even some experienced APEX developers wrestle with.

As another example, I heard a manager say that he was going to pursue building an application with Oracle JET because it's easier to find JavaScript developers.  We on the APEX team love Oracle JET and want Oracle JET to succeed (so much so, that we've integrated Oracle JET to produce the data visualizations in APEX 5.1!).  But this manager's statement was a bit misguided, because 1) your knowledge of JavaScript doesn't mean you'll immediately know how to use Oracle JET, you'll need to learn it, and 2) what about the rest of the stack?  Is a JavaScript developer good at data modeling?  Are they competent in authoring and tuning SQL?  Do they know when it's preferable to use PL/SQL in their SQL and when not to?  Or is that someone else's job?

My advice when you're looking for APEX developers - determine what is most important to you, and what skills and technologies you need the most assistance with.  APEX development is ultimately Oracle Database development (Smart DB development, as some would say), and experience with SQL and PL/SQL and data modeling is always relevant.  If you have a subpar data model and poor SQL, your application will suffer regardless of front-end technology.  If you have no knowledge of Web applications and you are rich in Oracle Database development talent, then focus instead on those who bring Web application development experience to the table.  I've found that the customers who "get it" the most are those who have done large-scale Web app development in another language or technology.  They are the ones who can appreciate the framework of APEX and how it enables them to focus on the business problem at hand, instead of focusing on all of the necessary minutiae typically associated with modern Web app development.

When reviewing potential candidates, don't focus exclusively on APEX experience.  APEX can be on the wish list of skills, but someone adept at database development or Web development can usually pick up APEX relatively quickly.

Oracle Database application development with APEX and Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) continues to grow, for both on-premises applications and the cloud.  Industry analysts are responding to more and more inquiries about APEX than ever before.  Countless colleges and universities are taking advantage of the free Oracle APEX curriculum and the free offering by Oracle Academy, helping to familiarize thousands of students on appdev with the Oracle Database & APEX.  The Oracle APEX community is vibrant and growing.  There's a reason why APEX skills are in high demand.

P.S.  If you've stumbled upon this blog post and have no idea what Oracle APEX even is, I suggest you review the Simple Guide to Oracle Application Express.