Oracle OpenWorld 2015: The Developer’s Overview

Last week was Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, California, and a huge week for me and our whole team at AuraPlayer.  Our week began on Sunday when I presented my “Mobile / Cloud Buzz Words for Dummies” to over 120 people eager learn how to start their mobile journey. But in fact they weren’t! I was shocked to find out, by a show of hands, that only 3 people in a room of over a hundred had even begun to think about their mobile strategy. It once again reminds me that although the world is going and talking about mobility, but the enterprise has not yet caught up. Guys it’s time to wake up (or wake up your managers)!  We even offer free sessions on how to begin your mobile journey, so if you would like to know how and when to get started, let us know here.

Some of the AuraPlayer team

Monday was the opening of the exhibition hall.  Where we were in full force with both a booth in the Oracle Mobile Pavilion as well as showcasing 4 solutions in the areas of retail, healthcare, field service and shop room floor applications (e.g. inventory management) at the Samsung booth. Our highlighted solution was our joint project for New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). Prior to the AuraPlayer/Oracle/Samsung solution, officers would report on accidents using pen and paper in the field and then a clerk would enter the data into a Forms back office application. The challenge was to modernize the system while leveraging the Oracle Forms legacy backend system-WITHOUT REDEVELOPMENT. The customer wanted a low maintenance solution and to be mobile without a costly and risky migration project. Now in the modernized collision reporting system, MTA uses AuraPlayer, Oracle Mobile Cloud Service and Samsung tablets to work on location and even offline. Officers using the S Pen on the Samsung tablet write as though they are writing on a notepad, but the handwriting is then translated into text for a seamless user experience. In addition, the features of data capture have been enhanced to allow capturing of photos as well as annotation and notes on the photos, then all is stored directly into Oracle mobile cloud service.

#OOW15 MTA Team

MTA was also featured in Oracle’s mobile keynote presentation, given by Suhas Uliyar’s (Oracle’s VP of Mobile strategy). Here we also did a demo of the app on a Samsung tablet LIVE.

During the regular Oracle OpenWorld sessions, the main excitement for developers was the introduction of several new tools that will allow business users to develop rapid applications based on Oracle Mobile / Cloud features. The first one, MAX, will be included as part of the Oracle Mobile Cloud Service and will allow business users to develop mobile apps using a wizard based, drag and drop development tool. This will help non-developers build cutting edge apps that can include graphs, list, maps and other advanced features of mobile applications, then deploy in a matter of seconds with a QR code. The second tool, the Oracle Application Builder will allow business users to create webpages through Oracle’s next generation developer cloud. This is again a wizard based development environment where using drag and drop, a JavaScript website is generated by any business user without any technical knowledge.

At the conference, many were worried about the fact that there seem to be tool confusion with the abundance of developer tools being offered in all different programming languages from PLSQL to Java.

Chris Tonas, Oracle’s VP of Development, in his Keynote on development technologies, presented an incredible slide to clarify the Oracle Development Map(below). He showed how JavaScript and Java are the top 2 development languages, and as such, Oracle wanted to provide development environments for both within the Oracle landscape.

To sum it up, to build Java based applications, developers can use Oracle ADF for enterprise applications accessible through a browser. For mobile apps, Oracle Mobile Framework is used to develop in Java to create on device apps for both IOS and Android (soon to be Windows 10).  Next we have the JavaScript developers. For them, Oracle released Oracle JET (JavaScript Extension Tool kit). This will allow JavaScript developers to build web based applications within Oracle’s Cloud based development environment.

And of course, we still have the PLSQL development tools. Here, we have Oracle Apex to build rapid webpages based on dynamic PLSQL and JavaScript. And last but definitely not least! Oracle Forms will remain a constant, supported development tool to build on premise, enterprise level, data entry desktop applications. Once again Oracle declared their commitment to continue to support Oracle Forms, and this could not have been more evident as Oracle Forms 12 C was released on the heels of OOW. It can be downloaded here. We have been doing a lot of sneak peeks of Oracle Forms 12 C, but it is great to finally have it ready for general release. We will be showing a Forms 12 C new features webinar shortly.  Click here to register.

Finally, we have the development tools geared towards the business users ie. NO CODING REQUIRED – Oracle MAX, and Oracle Application Builder. Oracle MAX will be a feature of Oracle’s Mobile Cloud Service. As we explained above, it is geared for business users to develop mobile apps using a wizard based, drag and drop development tool in a matter of hours. This functionality will revolutionize the way business users and especially Oracle Forms developers are able to navigate the mobile world.  Until MAX, Forms developers would need to learn HTML, Java Script, or Java, in order to build mobile front ends. But with AuraPlayer and MAX, Forms users can continue the wizard based development they are use to and extend their existing systems to mobile. Now, with a few clicks of a button the customers will be able to wrap their existing Forms systems as a REST service, using AuraPlayer’s cloud API, plug it into Oracle Mobile Cloud, and then with a few drag and drops, build a cutting edge user interface.  I am sure this will be a game changer for mobile development in the enterprise. We are looking forward to the release of MAX shortly, and we are happy to connect anyone who would like to see a demo of MAX, with the appropriate Oracle PM team. For more information on Oracle’s Mobile cloud, click here.

Then we have the website development tool for business users. As we mentioned earlier, with Oracle Application Builder Cloud Service, users with no previous programming experience are empowered to create and extend web and mobile apps on their own. If they are able to do a little programming, they can also write custom code for advanced use cases by using standard JavaScript, HTML5, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) techniques. Find more information here.

Seeing Oracle’s vision from end to end, for JavaScript, PLSQL and Java developers, really was an eye opener – and they can now say they have “the right tool for the right job – for any developer”.

A further interesting point was the fact that Oracle’s development tools are no longer required to work with Oracle’s Mobile Cloud. Xamarin has just signed a partnership with Oracle where their developers can easily use Oracle’s Mobile Cloud service as their back end infrastructure. This will now open up Oracle’s Cloud based environment to the over 1.2 million mobile developers who are now using the Xamarin solution.

Seeing all these new cutting edge UI development environments that connect to Oracle’s Mobile Cloud Service was really exciting to us, especially since AuraPlayer can provide the back end API’s to expose Oracle Forms to any of these development  tools. So no matter what you choose to develop with for your front end UI, we have you covered on the back end.

All in all it was an incredible week of talking tech and meeting customers and friends. If anyone is interested in having an executive update on the Oracle developer landscape or the main messages from OOW, please let us know here. The next stops on our Oracle Forms modernization world tour will be next week at the DOAG conference in Germany followed by the UKOUG event in December. I will keep you guys updated.