Frankly Speaking

The IT environment is going through a period of heavy transition. The transition period that we are in now is somewhat similar to the transition period from Mainframes to PCs. The only difference is the transition that we are facing now will happen much faster than the Mainframe-to-PC era. So where are these changes happening. Similar to Mainframe-to-PC era, the changes are happening at every layer in the IT stack: Infrastructure, Information, and Application. Let’s explore a bit on what is happening in each of these layers. Infrastructure Layer: One of the major changes happening at the infrastructure layer is the move from on-premise architectures to cloud-based architecture. The cloud-based infrastructure is one that offers servers, networks, storage as service to the customers. There are lot of firms such as Amazon, Rackspace, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle offers such infrastructure as a service. So, why this cloud-based architecture is important for any firm and what are the ch...

Oracle Application Express(APEX) is a super-fast web based application development tool. I say "Super Fast" because its really easy even for a novice to build a complete running application. It is packaged as an add-on with Oracle Database and if you are good at reading through technical documentation, one can easily install APEX by running few scripts from command prompt. For others, you can leverage on Oracle's public APEX offering at  APEX Public Instance. All that an user needs to do is request for a workspace(free!!), bingo, you have access to the world's best database and application development tool. APEX is quite a baby stuff, but its versatile and leverages the power of Oracle database, PL/SQL, Javascripts, AJAX, jQuery. What's great about APEX? As a technical consultant, I had worked on developer tools such as Oracle Reports, Oracle Forms etc. Though these tools are powerful, I much prefer using APEX to build any reports or forms since its much mor...