Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Oracle Application Express 3.0 a credible alternative to Microsoft Access?

I hope most people know by now that Oracle Application Express (APEX) 3.0 has gone production, is available for download from OTN and our hosted instance, apex.oracle.com had also been upgraded to 3.0. There has been some positive reviews in the press recently, here are links to a number of them:

Oracle Updates Application Express Tool
Oracle updates free Web development tool
Oracle has big ambitions for Application Express
Oracle improves free tool for building Web Applications
Oracle Application Express 3.0 Touts Access Migration


Most customers I talk with have problems with Access and are looking at alternatives, which I guess is the reason I am talking with them in the first place. However, Microsoft Access is a popular desktop database and was updated recently as part of the Office 2007. That said, it is desktop centric and more suited (optimized?) for productivity applications used by individuals or small groups.

On our OTN page about the Application Migration Workshop we have published a high level feature comparison of Access and Oracle APEX.

Is Oracle Application Express 3.0 a credible alternative to Microsoft Access?

What do you think?