Application development made easy with AI: Oracle Apex evolves

Artificial intelligence is revolutionising the world of software, and Oracle, one of the giants of the technology industry, has seized this opportunity by integrating powerful Ai-based functionality into its low-code development platform, Oracle APEX, which allows software applications to be created with a minimum of manual coding effort. A series of innovations aiming to make the application development process more accessible and intuitive for developers.

One of the main additions is the APEX AI Assistant, a tool that allows applications to be created using simple natural language instructions. For example, instead of having to memorise the names of tables, columns and complex SQL syntax, developers can simply formulate a request such as 'Show me all the large pink t-shirts left over from the last shipments to our Kansas City and Wichita locations'. The AI Assistant will take care of translating this request into a valid SQL statement, thus automating much of the work. In addition, the AI Assistant can explain existing code and suggest bug fixes at the click of a button, relieving developers of the task of debugging and correcting routine code.

Another interesting feature is the Create APP Assistant, which allows new application projects to be created from natural language prompts specifying the desired attributes and functionality. Instead of having to manually set up each individual component, developers can describe the application they want to realise, and the assistant will take care of generating the basic structure.

Finally, Oracle APEX now offers the ability to easily add an AI-based conversational interface to applications. This allows end users to 'converse' with the application using natural language, without the need for developers to create complex generative artificial intelligence or natural language processing components from scratch.

"Having an Ai assistant at your disposal that can contextually determine column names or JOINs and generate complex syntaxes is a real breakthrough," said Mike Hichwa, senior vice president, Software Development, Oracle.