Why an APEX Developer Needs to Know HTML

Often it is assumed that if you know about Oracle, SQL and PL/SQL then you can automatically develop an application using Oracle APEX. Whilst this isn’t incorrect, it also isn’t strictly true. Oracle APEX allows web pages to be developed quickly and easily using SQL and PL/SQL knowledge alone. However, these are very basic applications that do not deviate from the templates supplied by Oracle. Whilst in a number of cases these applications are adequate for the purpose intended, they are unlikely to offer the user anything more than being practical. However, an APEX developer that also knows web languages can quickly turn the application into a lot more.

A superior application, developed in any technology, must be user-friendly and well designed. When you start to improve the User Interface, the APEX developer needs to know more than just SQL. Improving the UI might simply involve changing the look of the application to fit your styling, but it could also include adding tooltips, improved date pickers or interacting with another website such as Google maps. To achieve these aims the APEX developer needs to know HTML, CSS, JavaScript and XML at least, along with the web standards for these languages.

There have been a number of occasions recently where I’ve seen APEX developers that have added malformed HTML and CSS to their pages, wondering why something, seemingly unrelated, doesn’t work. With Oracle, if you have an IF statement and you don’t have an END IF then your code errors and won’t run, and this is what the developer is expecting to happen within their APEX application. However, with HTML and JavaScript it’s not as straightforward. If you open a tag and don’t close it, or close a tag that isn’t already open, your page will still be displayed and the browser will not error, but there may well be something on your page that doesn’t work and, if you’re lucky, doesn’t look right.

With APEX development it is important to understand all the technologies you are using. There is so much that is achievable with APEX. It’s possible to cost-effectively build a production quality, web 2.0 application that is feature rich and styled how you want it to look in a relatively short amount of time. But you need a developer that is competent with web languages and appreciates the W3C standards. At Silvercore Solutions I have worked with jQuery, jQuery UI, XML and JSON integration and have strong HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills. I understand the importance of a strong User Interface: it’s what the user sees every day, it sells your applications and it distinguishes between a good application and an excellent software solution. So if you want to develop an APEX application that really delivers, then get in touch to discuss the options available to you.