About

I’m Dimitri, a builder from Leuven, Belgium. I started writing about Oracle Application Express in 2006 and kept going for twenty years: around 850 posts, 209 talks, and more Oracle APEX apps than I can count. Every big football tournament since 2006 I’ve rebuilt a prediction app in the newest Oracle APEX release; it’s still my favourite way to test what a new version can do. “Passionate about bringing ideas to life with code” has been the line on my blog since the start, and it still holds.

How I got here

I was four when I started on my father’s Apple II. At ten I had my own IBM XT, and I’ve been building things with computers ever since.

I started my career at Oracle, as a consultant in the expert database team. In 2004 I saw Oracle APEX for the first time and fell in love. From then on I set out to spread the word about Oracle APEX, and went on to training, consulting and custom development with it.

I’ve always done a lot of R&D. Building with Oracle APEX every day, I kept finding things it could do better, so we started building products to supplement it. APEX Office Print (AOP) is the best known. That work grew into APEX R&D and, since 2020, United Codes, which today brings Oracle expertise across Oracle Cloud, the Oracle Database, Oracle APEX and AI.

What I love most is how far United Codes reaches today: we serve customers in 120 countries, and I work with people from all parts of the world, with team members in Nepal, the US (Texas), Slovenia, Croatia, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

On one of our projects I met a highly motivated person who wanted to take on the world of inspections. That became Inspectwise, which I co-founded and where I’m CTO: by putting AI to work, we make inspectors successful.

I’ve always tried to make developers and companies successful. With Tsaru I go one step further, to people at home: calm, privacy-minded technology that works in the background, so a home stays a place to live, not manage.

What I’m thinking about

Most of my thinking now goes into what AI changes for developers: not the hype, but the workflow. How do you set up an agent to build Oracle APEX apps safely? What does a developer’s day look like when the typing is no longer the bottleneck? That’s what you’ll find most of in my AI-assisted development posts.

I’m also drawn to smart buildings and smart cities. I want to understand that world: how buildings and cities work, and where technology can genuinely help the people who live in them.

Who inspires me

I’ve driven a Tesla for over ten years, not because I like cars, but because I like technology. Two people have shaped how I think about it.

Larry Ellison, because I love data and believe much of the world revolves around it. The Oracle Database was, and still is, the best place to store your data.

Elon Musk, for his entrepreneurial spirit: he shows how far engineering can go when you refuse to accept that something can’t be done, from electric cars and self-driving to reusable rockets.

Recognition

• Organised the first Oracle APEX meetup in San Francisco, during Oracle OpenWorld 2006 (how it went). It became a fixture at every OpenWorld after.
• Oracle ACE Director since 2008
• APEX Developer of the Year 2009, Oracle Magazine
• Oracle Developer Choice Award 2015 (ORDS)

Book

Co-author of Expert Oracle Application Express (Apress, 2011; second edition 2015). In the second edition I wrote the chapter on charts in Oracle APEX 5.0.

Where to find me

You’ll find me at the Oracle conferences, often on stage: APEX World, APEX Connect, APEX Alpe Adria, ODTUG Kscope and Oracle AI World. If you’re there too, come and say hi.

Or email me at dimitri@dgielis.com, or find me on LinkedIn or X. To hear about new posts, subscribe to the newsletter.