Talk:Oracle Application Express

HTML DB is the current result of a long and continuing interaction between a large corporation (Oracle), the people who work for it as consultants (e.g. Tom Kyte), and the evolving social/technical phenomena known as the Internet.

HTML DB, despite its so-homely-it's-cute name, is an interesting development in this spiral. "Why?" you ask? Well, for several reasons. First of all, in keeping with one of the fundamental dictates of the fore-father of relational databases, "Ted" Codd, HTML DB is in general written in itself. That is, it is a self-referential technology. HTML DB generates web pages from an Oracle-managed database using PL/SQL (by default). The routines which generate this PL/SQL (Procedural Language/Structured Query Language, Oracle's proprietary refinement and extension of Structured Query Language which addresses some of the shortcomings of the state-ful, non-procedural SQL) are themselves PL/SQL. The web-pages which form the user interface of HTML DB are similarly generated from a database schema using PL/SQL. Self-referential. Very cool.

This is not to say that HTML DB is limited to PL/SQL, however. A second reason that HTML DB is an interesting development is that those more skilled than I can write and embed JavaScript and other executable code within their HTML DB applications. Extensible. Also very cool.

And finally (in this short list), one very, very, cool thing about HTML DB is that it is relatively easy to learn. At the same time, it is suprisingly powerful for such a (relatively) dead-simple tool.

Can it solve world hunger? Achieve lasting peace? No and no. Help you create a useful, expandable, data-driven web presence? You bet.