OOW15: Coming soon, ABCService

One of the other cloud announcements that caught my eyes on Open World was ABCS, the Application Builder Cloud Service. A tool for the Line of Business user to create simple web and/or mobile application by drag and drop in the web browser. Simple add components out of a menu on the page, rearrange them and edit them the way you want in the WYSIWYG editor.

The tool either creates business objects from scratch in the underlying Oracle database or you can base them on a REST Service that someone has exposed. Because the application is 100% in the cloud, not only a “development tool” but it also hosts the application, there is no installation required to get you up and running. Honestly said, I was surprised by the intelligence of the tool to help the user promote their changes made in edit mode to production.

At the first publication, obviously this is no problem, but what if you create database changes? The ABCS recognizes whether the change is compatible (for example, adding a column) or non-compatible (for example, deleting a column). In the first scenario (compatible changes), the abcs will suggest two options, promote to production and keep the existing production data or promote to production and promote the stage database to production as well.
In the second scenario (non compatible changes), the abcs tool will warn you about the non compatible changes and suggest to export the production database to the staging database before promoting the staging database to production.
The scenarios might be a bit out of the comfort zone of the average business user, but with a little help from the IT department, you can go a long way.

Obviously the Application Builder Cloud Service supports the Alta UI look and feel, but a nice extra feature is that this PaaS solution is fully written in Oracle JET. Next to that it also produces Oracle JET code. So if your simple application grows out to be more complex it is possible to export the Oracle JET code and have a developer work on the code to evolve this to a more enterprise like application. In other words, you can have your Line of Business user create their own prototype, making sure “the IT guys” are able to implement the application.

The ABCS page is up and running, but the PaaS solution is not out on the market yet. Just as with the other cloud products, it will be possible to get a 30 days trial once the cloud product is launched.

Once again I am sorry for not having better screenshots of the product.