APEX

Before my IS department jumps head-first with both feet into Apex (mixed metaphor intended), one of our managers has asked that we do a thorough platform review to be sure that Apex is the right one. As the lead evangelist here, I've been asked to write this white paper that thoroughly appears to be an impartial review of alternatives, and then soundly concludes that Apex is the best in most cases.

I'm just getting started, so was hoping someone else might have already had to go through such an exercise? If so, could you share it? At least the non-proprietary parts? I've done a couple searches of this forum but haven't found any mention of something non-technical like this. I already plan to look through the existing Oracle White Papers that promote Apex but if someone has more-specific, that would be a huge help. And when I finish this write-up I'll publish a link to it here.

Obviously Apex isn't going to be the best fit for all development needs, so let me explain basically what our environment is and what I think our needs are:

Environment

* Our team supports the alumni relations and fund-raising department for a small private college in New England.
* Most of our data resides in Oracle, under the umbrella of a third-party maintenance and (basic) reporting application. External data is often kept at the department-level in FileMaker Pro databases, most of which were created by end-users, with fine-tuning and serious coding by some skilled analysts. We would like to get a better connection between the external data and that in Oracle, but end-user demands for quick turnaround and the ability to customize reports on their own (because the IS queue is too big) have kept that from happening much.
* The packaged application is delivered to all users via Citrix.
* We have 5 senior Oracle programmers, about 4 data/business analysts, a couple people in adhoc reporting (using InfoMaker, the report-writer for PowerBuilder, which our c/s application is developed in), and IT support.

Our History with Apex:

* I've developed 2 Apex applications that are in production, with another waiting in the wings.
* I've presented one of these applications and the basics of Apex at a "hey look at this new technology, isn't this cool?" meeting, where it garnered some interest.
* We only have a few others in production in the college, but interest is growing.

Our Upcoming Needs:

* While users often want their own small databases, most of the needs (I've seen) require integration with our application data (in Oracle).
* More specifically, users need data in a different form than can be provided by a report from the package, combined Oracle data with outside data or need to perform large data searches or updates that would be cumbersome and time-consuming via the package application. Additionally, they may need to provide Oracle data securely to people that do not have access to the package application (e.g. alumni).

Alternatives I'm Including in this paper:

* Apex
* Web applications developed via hand-coding HTML (e.g. htp package)
* Modifying our packaged application (a straw man, we've already rejected this option as too maintenance-intensive)
* Oracle Discoverer
* FileMaker Pro
* Build standalone Powerbuilder applications (we have the skills but these can take a while)


Thanks,

Stew