Oracle APEX (or Oracle Application Express) is an online low-code application builder that allows users to develop a database-drive application, customize the application's UI, and then give their users access to the application via URL. Oracle APEX includes a suite of pre-built productivity applications and examples, such as a Survey Builder, Bug Tracking, P-Track project management, etc
$0.32
OCPU per hour
ServiceNow Now Platform
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
The ServiceNow Now Platform is a digital workflow building and extension tool for ServiceNow featuring a number of low-code / no code tools.
It is appropriate for database application development supporting data driven processes, online transaction processing, BI/reports/analytics ... for addressing about any business data processing need I can think of. Oracle Application Express is fantastic for creating beautiful rich user interfaces with support for all major browsers rendering well on a range of devices. It is less appropriate for applications requiring native low level access to device peripherals and is less appropriate for applications that must execute offline without network/internet connection to supporting application and database servers.
Using it in the application support team is worth it as it is capable of carrying a lot of information. But using it for a Service Desk operation might not be of much use as it won't be used up to its full potential and will be costly as compared to other alternatives available in the market.
It helps put manage the request really well. It is easier to create a request, track the request and manage the request. It doesn't get lost into a pile of requests.
We've already pre-setted some settings into our ServiceNow. So it automatically assigns the level of urgency and mentions on the ticke if its a high or low priority request.
I really like the ServiceNow dashboards. They ate setup in a really nice way. The dashboards show the real time data aswell as old data incase if we need to see if there is a pattetn in the request or to fix any recurring issue.
For complex APEX applications you need to be a pro expert in PL/SQL
Debugging in APEX can be complicated if there is a logical error. Syntax errors will end up shown as ORA errors
Lack of designer interface. Even though you are designing a form you need to do it by means of APEX interface using a series of steps, no UI for design
Oracle specific not applicable for other databases
Providing admins/devs with easier mechanisms for providing businss stakeholders with self-service admin capabilities across the platform
Tutorials on how to be the best at reporting in servicenow
Guided tour functionaltiy is a bit rigid and could use more workflow capabilities
Making it easier to push form variables to the user so there is more context when providing an approval. The out of box approval UI/form is terrible in my opinion.
I felt very comfortable using Oracle Application Express from the start. I designed my data model and quickly developed the basic CRUD pages for master tables. Then I designed the main functionality and was able to test and deploy it in a couple of days work. I will probably share the app with other members of the team and continue adding some features in the short term.
While we are very likely to renew, we are also assessing if we should renew all of what we currently subscribe to as we try to reduce costs. Some parts of the business feel there may be a better tool out there to fit their process requirements. We are currently working with them to identify what those requirements are to see if it makes sense while also pointing out a reduced cost of tooling is not always the best fit if we have an increased cost of customization and maintenance between tools.
Because it's very easy to develop, fast, secure, has a lot of features. It's like a prototyping tool such as figma, but it can be used as a real product. Dynamic action, plugin, rest api, minimize a lot of coding, a lot of templates, PWA, really bring Oracle APEX functionality to be able to solve most common internal users pain points.
ServiceNow is a web platform that does not require any installation on a customer's computer. It is very easy to use and it is user-friendly. The customer started to open incidents very fast without investing time and money in training. Customer loves the dashboard at the startup where they can see all their open incidents or look at KB articles for any issue.
Very active and knowledgeable community support includes quick and helpful responses from the Oracle employees on the product development team. I've never had to raise an official support request - everything is dealt with via forums and user groups - or via direct emails. The supposrt commuinty is one of the great things about Apex.
The platform is provided as a SaaS solution and support from the vendor has been good. There are regular software releases with bug fixes, new features and enhancements, and furthermore we are given the opportunity to fully test these before rolling these new releases out into the production environment to minimise the risk of business disruption
Using it on the cloud is really simple, the entire process of configuring and provisioning an Oracle Database takes only a few minutes (less than 10) and then Oracle APEX is already deployed on the database, so you just have to start using it. I would strongly recommend using APEX on Oracle Cloud Free Tier.
We went through a re-implementation last year with a partner and were very pleased with the outcome. We looked at several partners and chose one that was able to provide an entire scope and cost upfront of what would be required to complete our requirements. We worked very closely with the dedicated team assigned to our project throughout the process and they fully delivered on all of our requirements that we presented in the initial scope.
Oracle APEX and Oracle Visual Builder are both low-code development platforms within the Oracle ecosystem, but they serve different purposes. Oracle APEX is more suited for the people who are familiar with SQL, PLSQL. It provides rapid application development features based on data residing in Oracle database. It's a low code platform and best suited for web based applications/extensions based on Oracle DB that may use REST APIs and other web services. It also provides mobile application support. Oracle Visual Builder is best suited for web applications based on Oracle Cloud services. It utilizes javascript based drag-drop UI builder. It's very deeply integrated with Oracle Fusion Cloud platform.
ServiceNow was chosen as replacement for Microsoft Project , due to better licensing model, more flexible configuration of the project stages and components, better API with Azure DevOps. Also ServiceNow is best in the area of Incident and Service management systems and the proof of concept with Jira and incident.io were not successful and we kept relying on ServiceNow. ServiceNow is much more scalable than MS Project for constantly growing enterprise companies for both employee and external contractor type personas.
It has increased our development output over Forms greatly. For instance, when starting at my current company, I was able to replace our aging ASP Intranet site within 4 months when our IT manager had budgeted over a year for the task.
We've been able to standardize under one technology, incorporating previously unsupportable disparate systems under one roof.
It's free with an Oracle Database so the only investment was our time, something we now have more of thanks to Application Express.
The biggest positive impact ServiceNow has made to our organization is reduced IT support cost. When we didn't use ServiceNow, we needed a bigger support team. Now we don't need as many support employees.
The other positive impact that I've noticed is faster solutions to any problems. ServiceNow makes very easy to resolve IT issues, in a efficient way. The tickets are organized in a way that the higher priority tickets get worked on quicker.
The dashboard has also made the job easy to find a recurring problem from its core and fixing it forever so that we don't repeatedly get the same issues again and again
