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Oracle has enhanced its low-code development platform with artificial intelligence to simplify and speed up the process of building enterprise applications using natural language. The first enhancement, the APEX AI Assistant, helps developers generate valid SQL statements, eliminating the need for routine coding tasks. The second feature, the Create App Assistant, provides application blueprints, allowing developers to focus more on features rather than code. Additionally, Oracle has introduced conversational AI dialogs that developers can incorporate into their applications to enable users to interact naturally with the software, thereby enhancing the in-app experience.
These AI tools are available within Oracle APEX today. Mike Hichwa, Oracle’s senior vice president for software development, highlights the benefits of the APEX AI Assistant for developers who regularly write SQL. It helps them remember table names, column names, and rarely-used syntax, significantly easing the development process.
Developers can leverage the APEX AI Assistant to create valid SQL statements using natural language prompts, build applications using a conversational interface that supports SQL, server-side JavaScript, and PL/SQL, and get context-aware assistance for syntax checking and debugging.
Oracle APEX, also known as Oracle Application Express, was launched in 2019 and is a no-cost feature of the Oracle Database. It was designed to minimize the coding needed to create new applications. According to Hichwa, many customers use APEX to build feature-rich applications that support thousands of users, often with small development teams, transitioning from initially using APEX for internal business applications.
Oracle claims that developers build and deploy enterprise apps 20 times faster with 100 times less code using Oracle APEX. The platform has been used by over 850,000 developers to create more than 21 million applications globally. Oracle APEX is widely used in sectors such as financial services, healthcare, transportation, and education, supporting a variety of applications including clinical trials and equipment leasing management.
The primary advantage of Oracle APEX, according to Hichwa, is its ability to keep developers agile and reduce the time and effort required to build applications, which can be completed in weeks instead of months compared to traditional coding methods. It also minimizes technical debt as Oracle ensures the backend handles vulnerabilities and bugs. Hichwa further explains that APEX focuses on capturing the intent of an application—what you want to do—while the AI-assisted platform handles the implementation details, allowing developers to focus on their creativity. As Oracle APEX improves, so do all the applications built with it.
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