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This is my personal evaluation of the current tools in the Oracle developer’s toolbox. If you’d like to hear me present my views on these and other tools in person, come to Oracle OpenWorld 2008 and hear my presentation “Choose Your Weapon – An Overview of Oracle Development Tools”.

Feel free to comment on this page (registration required) or send me a mail if you disagree.

Also, please check out the product pages on the Oracle Wiki. After registration, you can update and improve the pages in classic Wiki fashion. There is also a discussion forum on each page for discussing the product.

Tool		Comment	Last updated
Application Development Framework		A complete, fully supported framework from a major vendor. Recommended for all Java applications that need database data.	24 MAY 2008
ADF Faces		This is the approach taken by the 8000+ developers building Oracle Fusion Applications, so serious attention from Oracle Development is assured. Some limitations due to web architecture, but new 11g components use AJAX to provide a very sophisticated interface for web applications.	25 NOV 2007
ADF Swing		Build modern-looking desktop applications with the sophisticated Swing component palette. Using ADF data binding, productivity is almost Forms-like. Oracle supplies less documentation and tutorials for ADF Swing than for ADF Faces. Not widely used.	17 JUN 2008
Application Express		Fast, wizard-driven development of web applications. Programming language for extending the functionality is PL/SQL (but HTML/CSS/JavaScript skills will be needed as well). No application server license needed.	25 SEP 2008
BI Publisher		Enterprise-level reporting solution that separates data sources (XML) from presentation template. Design reports in MS Word or with a web client. Included with Oracle E-business Suite, but everyone else must purchase it as an Option for Oracle Application Server Enterprise Edition.	25 SEP 2008
Oracle Designer		Orphaned. Not updated to support new database features, and the JDeveloper plug-in that used to be able to access the Designer repository has been discontinued. Contains a bit of user-developed functionality – Open Source, anyone?	24 MAY 2008
Forms		Considered legacy technology by most organizations. Only web deployment support, requiring an application server license. Some work required to move from client/server to web deployment. A few new features coming in Forms 11g.	24 MAY 2008
Reports		Powerful, but hard to learn. Fusion Applications is moving to BI Publisher, and Java applications tend to use other reporting tools. For organizations without a BI Publisher license, still the tool of choice for very sophisticated reports.	24 MAY 2008
PL/SQL		Not going away, but not growing either. Programming language of choice in the database - Java Stored Procedures are such a hassle. With Oracle SQL Developer, Oracle is finally providing an excellent PL/SQL development tool.	24 MAY 2008
Oracle Portal		Oracle is positioning Oracle WebCenter as the new portal, and Portal 11g does not seem to contain significant new features. Still an excellent choice for organizations unwilling to invest in the expensive enterprise-level Oracle WebCenter product.	24 MAY 2008
Oracle WebCenter		The new portal, re-engineered in Java to support the latest standards. Extra cost option for Oracle Application Server Enterprise Edition. Most organizations will find that the feature set of current version (10.1.3) does not justify the cost, but 11g contains a great many improvements.	24 MAY 2008

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