22 OCW Extending Oracle Cloud Applications

Oracle reached out to me in the summer and told me one of the highlights for OCW would be extending Cloud Applications or Fusion. They wanted me to get the news out that there would be something to hear.

I had a briefing with Jeff Price and Jenny Lam, SVP UX Design Leadership, Oracle on the two areas they were going to talk about, Redwood Design and Applications Platform. Not completely new but not talked about enough. Then I had a further technical drill down with Jeff.

So I wrote a few posts on linkedin and twitter and suggested people join their sessions and although not the actual session you can see a shortened version on line.

Jenny spoke with Hillel Cooperman, SVP UX Design,  and the man behind Redwood shared his thoughts on Designing Applications. I first met Hillel when he was new to Oracle. As a UX advocate and used to the UX team engaging fully with the ACE program, I was excited about what he may of been planning. Hillel met with me at HQ but told me there was a lot of work to do, it went beyond just the  application and to be patient, when they had something to show us, he would. Well we got Redwood as a theme, and now there really is something to talk about.

Hillel talked about his user experience ethos and how it starts with Design. They shared the Redwood.oracle.com site for design patterns.

If you develop applications, in Oracle or anything else I recommend you watch Hillel's part for the session, available online for a few more weeks.

Jeff Little VP, Product Development then talked about Building your UX - this session (also available) is about Visual Builder. The tool has been around for a while and we know Oracle Cloud Applications are mainly VB and their tool of choice. 

Things that really resonated with me in this session is the inbuilt capability, Enterprise Search, Machine Learning.

Not just new functionality in VB but also being part of THE platform and how Oracle is continuously making it easier for people to extend their applications. I know there is more to come and if you haven't looked at Visual Builder recently, then you must.

For the past few years I have led a track at KSCOPE the ODTUG conference looking at Modern Application Development, but for me it is about Extending Oracle Cloud Applications and I am so pleased to announce that is the new title of this track. Call for papers is now open so if this is your area please submit.

And what about APEX? Many people, including my own organisation have been using APEX to extend their applications. If an on premise customer asked me today what to use, I would shout APEX. If a net new customer to Oracle Cloud Applications asked me, and they had no Oracle skills I would say Visual Builder. 

I think Visual Builder has proved it isn't 'flash in the pan' and the commitment Oracle have to it proves it has a long life with much more to come. But APEX isn't going anywhere either. In Larry Ellison's keynote it was mentioned probably 100 times and has been the backbone to their commitment to Health, both during the pandemic and going forward with Cerner.

I asked Steve Miranda, before OCW the question and he was clear no need to replace APEX extensions or even stop using it. He mentioned APEX himself in his keynote. 

So APEX and Visual Builder can live together, co-exisit. 

The world of extending Oracle Cloud Applications, both within and outside the application is a very exciting place to be, come join me.

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