APEXIA uses Oracle APEX & FOEX to develop all-in-one, data-centric business applications

Topic

Application Development


Industry

Retail

Key points

APEXIA was searching for a development tool that would provide similar functionality to what Oracle Forms could offer.

An application that took 12 months to built was redeveloped with Oracle APEX & FOEX in only 5 months.

Due to FOEX’s functionality the development team was able to focus on the app’s business logic, rather than just on writing code.

The Customer

APEXIA is an Australian IT company with over 25 years of Oracle experience. They specialize in developing business solutions using Oracle APEX and offer a broad range of other services in the areas of Oracle Database, Middleware, eBusiness Suite and Hosting.

As a trusted partner, APEXIA aims to deliver high quality and innovative business solutions for their customers worldwide within budget and on time, allowing them to realise the full potential of their investment.

The Challenge

Traditionally, APEXIA has worked with large organisations across Australia who have been using Oracle Forms / Reports over the years as their primary tool for developing software applications. As companies started to transition to the web, APEXIA began looking for alternative development tools that could provide the rich functionality requested by their customers, since Oracle Forms was not suited for building such web applications.

Java and .NET were initially considered, but due to a lack of specialized resources both options were quickly discarded.

Oracle APEX was considered next and the development team was able to use it successfully on a number of different projects. However, they have realized that it was not very well suited for building applications similar in complexity to what they have been developing with Oracle Forms.

The development team came across a PL/SQL based product which also integrated Ext JS into their framework and provided the ability to write complex transactional applications. APEXIA’s developers decided to use it and build a SaaS application for small/medium businesses which handle repairs (ex: computer repairs) or offer other related services.

FOEX Success Stories: APEXIA

After just 12 months the development team realized that the PL/SQL based tool they picked had a couple of shortcomings, among which: the developer productivity wasn’t as good as initially estimated and the vendor didn’t seem to have any plans to upgrade the Ext JS version that was used by the framework. This meant that APEXIA would potentially miss on any of the improvements brought to Ext JS in later versions.

The Solution

Having learned about the FOEX Plugin Framework during their initial research, APEXIA decided to evaluate it and see whether the combination of Oracle APEX and FOEX plugins could provide the necessary functionality required by their customers, while also offering their team a rapid application development tool that would be updated regularly over time.

After a successful free trial, the team faced the daunting task of using APEX / FOEX to rewrite the application previously developed using the PL/SQL based tool for the past 12 months. Due to FOEX’s rapid prototyping capabilities and large collection of components, APEXIA’s developers were able to completely rewrite the app in only 5 months.

The application has pre-built templates for a number of different vertical markets, such as computer repair, bike shops and small manufacturing. A special module has been created and optimised for the car service industry, where more specific details for service and repair management are required.

It also handles all sides of a repair and service business: scheduling, inventory, purchasing, sales, invoicing, job and time management. The app has interfaces to a number of cloud based accounting software solutions (XERO, MYOB, SAGE) and to desktop versions of Quick Books and MYOB through simple CSV files. The system has also interfaces to a number of spare parts supply companies for the car industry for ordering part on business accounts.

The FOEX Form and FOEX Grid components were among the most heavily used ones, but according to APEXIA’s development team, the FOEX Content Loader was the plugin which provided the most value for this application.


When asked about his development experience with FOEX, Raymond Allo - Principal Consultant at APEXIA, explained:

We found out that one of the most loved features of our application is that a user can open up multiple sales orders at the time. This is such an incredible time saver in sales and invoicing. For example, the sales consultant is working on a sales order and gets a phone inquiry from a customer on another sales order.

Most web applications will have you save the sales order that you were working on, open the other sales order from the inquiry and, when finished, bring up the first sales order and continue to work on it. With FOEX you can open multiple sales orders in tabs and work individually on them.


The FOEX forum was helpful, especially in the beginning when the team had to learn about some of the development concepts and the components available within the FOEX Plugin Framework. The demo application/cookbook was also a great learning resource and provided insights into how components work when combining APEX and FOEX. Their development team discovered that some of the applications they’ve been developing required less coding as more and more is handled declaratively through FOEX.

The FOEX Plugin Framework enabled APEXIA to build applications with a main focus on increased flexibility and a user interface which results in measurable time savings for customers. One of their customers found that by using this SaaS application, the average time to service a client had decreased from 10 minutes to 5 minutes. With this application the pressure is taken off the sales consultant and allows for customers to be serviced much quicker.

 

Testimonial

"I decided to give myself one week to evaluate FOEX and make a decision. At the end of the evaluation I was hooked. I could go back to APEX and with FOEX I could build the complex transactional applications required by ourselves and our clients."

Raymond Allo (Principal Consultant, APEXIA)