Hello, welcome to Oracle APEX Foundations course; getting started with Oracle APEX module, Oracle APEX Use Cases lesson. My name is Chaitanya. I'm a product manager on the Oracle APEX product development team. Oracle APEX provides compelling solutions for a variety of use cases. So, lets go ahead and learn what these use cases are. In this lesson, you learn about the different facets of application development that APEX takes care of. You also learn about Oracle APEX Use Cases. Let us first try to understand what does APEX do for you. APEX minimizes the complexity involved with multi-faceted applications and provides developers with the features they need to solve business problems without needing to become experts in vast web technologies. User Interface: Universal Theme is the user interface for APEX that enables developers to build modern web applications without requiring extensive knowledge of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. With just some basic knowledge of APEX, you can use Universal Theme to easily build a responsive application that is highly accessible, easily customizable, and easy to maintain.

Data: APEX strives to make it as easy as possible for you to display, manipulate, chart, and process data as easily and efficiently as possible. No matter where your data comes from, whether it is from a local database, remote database or a web service, APEX features state-of-the-art functionality to help you turn data into information. Visualization: With APEX, you can enjoy powerful chart and visualization capabilities powered by Oracle JET. You can easily add beautiful, fast, highly customizable, accessible, and extremely versatile charts to your applications with ease. Security: APEX is designed to build web applications that are highly secure out of the box. In a world of constantly changing web standards and increasingly resourceful attackers finding new ways to hack sites, APEX focus on security means that your applications stay protected. Globalization: Globalization is the ability of a development framework to support developing applications that perform well and correctly in multiple languages and local environments. APEX is designed with globalization in mind.

This includes support for translating applications as well as localization; that is, adapting an application to support a specific language and locale. Monitoring: Monitoring and logging provide insight into how users interact with your application. This information can be indispensable in identifying hacking attempts, performance issues, and application errors. With APEX, you're completely covered because monitoring and logging are already built in. Now, let us learn what is Oracle APEX used for. Oracle APEX provides compelling solutions for a variety of use cases, whether it is a simple spreadsheet replacement or a mission critical enterprise system used by thousands on a daily basis. One of the primary use case of APEX is to replace spreadsheets used for business critical functions. Using the wizard in APEX and just a few clicks, you can transform your spreadsheet into a fully-populated table in Oracle Database and then complete with the fully functioning application with a report and form for maintaining the data. You can just drag and drop an XLS, CSV, XML, or JSON file and convert that into a beautiful, responsive and secure APEX application in minutes.

Instead of having any number of spreadsheets floating around, you can build a single source of truth. Users log into APEX to access a single centralized application where everyone maintains the data and everyone always sees the same data. And instead of sending a file, you just send the URL to the end users. Spreadsheets generally lack authentication and auditing capabilities. APEX applications can utilize Single Sign-On, LDAP, or Social Sign-In and can readily incorporate audit tracking. Once you build this application, you can extend this application with charts, calendars, validations, and more. One of the major use cases of APEX is to build applications required immediately to meet a new business opportunity. Organizations have a huge backlog of applications; they're required to meet every changing business need and to stay competitive. These are generally not enterprise applications and may only be required for a limited time. The requirements may be poorly defined and the business priorities may change rapidly which is why the applications must be very fast to build and easy to update as required, and APEX is a best fit for such requirements.

Using the powerful wizards in APEX, you can build applications in days or weeks. You can create a fully-featured application in minutes. You can easily work with end-users and implement changes and enhancement requests often in real time. You can just drag and drop an XLS, CSV, XML, or JSON file and convert that into your beautiful, responsive and secure APEX application in minutes. Instead of having any number of spreadsheets floating around, you can build a single source-of-truth. Users log into APEX to access a single centralized application where everyone maintains the data and everyone always sees the same data. And instead of sending a file, you just send the URL to the end users. Spreadsheets generally lack authentication and auditing capabilities. APEX applications can utilize Single Sign-On, LDAP, or Social Sign-In and can readily incorporate audit tracking. Once you build this application, you can extend this application with charts, calendars, validations and more. One of the major use cases of APEX is to build applications required immediately to meet a new business opportunity. Organizations have a huge backlog of applications, they're required to meet every changing business need and to stay competitive.

These are generally not enterprise applications and may only be required for a limited time. The requirements may be poorly defined and the business priorities may change rapidly, which is why the applications must be very fast to build and easy to update as required, and APEX is a best fit for such requirements. Using the powerful wizards in APEX, you can build applications in days or weeks. You can create a fully featured application in minutes. You can easily work with end users and implement changes and enhancement requests often in real time. APEX is just as fast at maintaining and enhancing existing applications as it is to build the first prototype. IT professionals as well as tech savvy business users can use the low code capabilities within Oracle APEX to quickly build applications. The powerful components of Oracle APEX enable you to add a high level of functionality to your applications with limited coding. With APEX, you can build solutions rapidly with just one or two people. You can go from concept to working prototype in just minutes. You can build simplistic and tactical applications for diverse use cases with minimal to no coding. Oracle APEX is the clear platform of choice for easily transitioning Oracle Forms applications to modern web applications. The same stored procedures and PL / SQL packages work natively in APEX making it a breeze to develop.

Oracle Forms Applications often provide an out-of-date client server user experience, may have poor usability and accessibility issues, have difficulties working with various browsers, and are not mobile friendly. It is often difficult and cost-prohibitive to hire skilled Oracle Forms Developers. As Oracle APEX and Oracle Forms are both SQL and PL / SQL based and provide declarative development environments, it is easy for developers to transition from Oracle Forms to Oracle APEX. You can build proof-of-concept using subset of Forms applications. And you can build organization-wide applications rather than back-office applications. With the Universal Theme in APEX, you can build modern, beautiful web-based external applications for customers and partners. Running an APEX application is 100% browser-based and requires no client software. The applications are fully responsive, making them mobile-ready by default, which means you can run in your browser or any device. For net new requirements or major functional upgrades, it is best to consider APEX as an alternative. Another major use case of APEX is extending your ERP systems. ERP systems provide extensive functionality out-of-the-box.

However, they don't always provide the specific reports you need or may be missing functionality especially if it is specific to your industry or your organization. You may also find common business processes that take far too many steps to complete, making them inefficient. In such cases, building an extension using APEX can not only fill the gaps, but deliver the appropriate information or greatly improve productivity and therefore enhance user satisfaction. For example, you can have organization specific dashboards, improved workflows, additional reporting to fill the gaps. Solutions for example meeting company or industry specific requirements by building Visfot applications. Such applications should utilize the appropriate ERP data, but may well have local database objects to store additional data not available in the ERP system. So, with APEX, you can build applications to optimize common business functions, enhance data capture, and integrate disparate data sources.

APEX can be used to build a wide variety of applications for any industry, from the simplest application that webifies a spreadsheet to mission critical applications which are used daily by tens of thousands of users. The elegant architecture of APEX has been used to power thousands of applications around the globe for years. Obtaining a complete accurate picture across the organization or even within a department is often very challenging. Data is held in numerous systems, existing reports are limited, and don't always provide the required detail to make informed business decisions. It is hard to limit who can see what and avoid data breaches, and running the CAN reports can take hours. Utilizing APEX and its extensive reporting and data visualization capabilities makes developing appropriate dashboards for various user communities far simpler. You can merge data silos within your APEX application and build interactive reporting applications based on disparate data. Applications built using Oracle APEX are enterprise ready from day one. APEX is unique, in that it offers flexibility in where it can be deployed.

You can deploy APEX on premises, on the Oracle Cloud, on a private cloud, or anywhere else Oracle Database runs. Apart from simplified deployment, a single APEX installation runs any number of applications. There is no limit on the number of applications, number of developers, and users. With APEX, you have direct access to all of the Oracle database, including the enterprise features and capabilities of the Autonomous Database. This means that APEX developers can use all of these functionality to build and deploy their mission critical enterprise systems. In this lesson, you learned about the different facets of application development that APEX takes care of. You also learned about Oracle APEX use cases. This concludes the lesson on Oracle APEX use cases. I hope you find that useful. Thank you so much for watching.