The APEX Developer Reinvented
AI is changing how we build software. And that also changes the role of the Oracle APEX developer.
Recently I asked an AI tool to build me a World Cup prediction app.
Within a couple of minutes it generated a full application; a React frontend, backend APIs, some database tables. It even came with it's own todos, so I could follow along where it was!
Everything wired together, deployed on the internet in one time. Pretty impressive!
The prompt I gave was simple:
Build a web application that lets my friends and me predict the scores of games at the 2026 World Cup.
You see or hear about these demos everywhere now, some call it vibe-coding.
But then I started thinking; if this was a real enterprise application, would I actually deploy this? Probably not.
Not because the AI did a bad job. But because when we build enterprise software, we care about things like:
security
performance
maintainability
data integrity
predictability
(and so much more)
And that is where the Oracle Database and Oracle APEX approach becomes extremely powerful.
APEX Has Always Been About Productivity
If you want to build applications on top of the Oracle Database, APEX is the fastest way to do it. Compared to traditional development stacks like Java, .NET, or JavaScript, developers are often 20x more productive by using the APEX low-code platform. This was the message we gave customers, but I believe today that is no longer the main driver. Instead, the message will change to say that we can produce applications consistent, reliable, secure, and performant.
The Early Days
When I first started working with APEX (back then called HTML DB), we often positioned it as a replacement for Excel "databases".
Many organizations had big enterprise systems, but departments still built their own tools in spreadsheets. APEX turned out to be the perfect sweet spot for those applications.
You could quickly build a secure application on top of the Oracle Database and share it with your team.
Back in 2006 I even built a small application to predict scores with friends for the World Cup. Simple idea, simple app, built quickly. That was exactly the magic of APEX.
The APEX Community
Over the years the Oracle APEX community grew tremendously.
More and more developers discovered that APEX was not only good for small departmental apps. It could also power serious enterprise systems.
Instead of traditional development stacks, companies started building:
ERP systems
CRM systems
internal portals
workflow engines
data management platforms
If there was an Oracle Database, APEX became the logical platform to develop on.
The community played a huge role in that growth. Blogs, plug-ins, conferences, examples everywhere. People sharing ideas and helping each other.
In 2017 I wrote a blog post explaining how I personally go from idea to application using APEX. That article describes how I typically build an application from scratch. And honestly, that approach worked really well for many years.
APEX Becomes Strategic for Oracle
Another big shift happened around 2020. During COVID, Oracle helped governments build applications extremely fast. APEX played an important role in that effort. At that moment it became clear, even at the highest level within Oracle, how powerful this platform really was.
From then on Oracle started positioning APEX much more prominently as the primary development platform for applications on the Oracle Database.
Before that, Java was often considered the default option. After that, the message became much clearer. If you have an Oracle Database, APEX should be your first choice for building applications.
AI Changes Everything
But the biggest shift is happening right now.
AI.
In the last few years the use of AI exploded. But for me it is especially in the last months that things really changed. Agentic coding tools like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and others have become really good. And that changes how we work.
The role of the Oracle APEX developer is no longer just building pages, writing SQL and PL/SQL, and configuring components. We are moving from low coders to something else.
More like:
designers
orchestrators
validators
AI can generate SQL, PL/SQL code, APIs, and even applications.
But it still needs someone who understands:
the business problem
the data model
Oracle APEX and the Oracle Database
and when AI is wrong
That person is still the APEX developer.
But the way we work is evolving quickly. I might be wrong, but I believe this:
Developers will not be replaced by AI. But developers using AI will replace those who don't.
We are really in exciting times! By leveraging AI, we as developers can do so much more now and help so many more people.
A New Series
So I thought it was a good time to revisit something I wrote years ago.
In 2017, I described how I turn an idea into an application with APEX. Now I want to do that again, but this time with AI in the loop.
To make it fun, I will rebuild the World Cup prediction app, just like I did back in 2006.
But this time using:
Oracle Database 26ai
Oracle APEX 24.2 (including ORDS)
AI coding tools like Claude Code
modern development workflows
In the next posts we will go step by step through the process. From idea to working application and we will see how AI changes the way we develop with Oracle APEX.
Generating some PL/SQL with AI is the easy part… in the next posts I want to see if AI agents can handle the entire development lifecycle and build full Oracle APEX applications.
There is a lot to explore 😁
