My presentation for UKOUG Tech 16 can be seen by following the link – Introduction to SOA CS. or see below   It was a tremendous 4 days (if you include the Tech stream’s Super Sunday).  If you are a UKOUG member and didn’t make it to the conference I’d look out for the material to be become available.

Whilst I’m not a big Apex fan (stitching business logic into the persistence layer feels wrong to a middleware person), i did attend the keynote session which covered Apex’s history and future direction, and there are some very exiciting things coming and if everything materialises as I understand it then some big steps to getting developers engaged with Oracle cloud offerings.

Oracle has done a lot of work on the middleware layer with apps container (using common Docker configurations without needing to worry about Docker), Kafka, Node.js and others to engage developers and provide the means to offer a polyglot microservices platform that is not just attractive to  the traditional Oracle customer base but also those wanting the middle ground of supported open source. What Oracle are missing is the means to get developers trying the technology and being creative with it. Amazon and Red Hat have got this by offering limited footprints for a long time. Oracle offer 30 day trials which is fine to do a project sponsored PoC. But to hook grass roots users you need a lengthy period where people in spare time can built some cool/geeky solutions.

Now this maybe down to the fact that Oracle cloud is built on their Exa machines with clever on silicon security features, and Oracle can’t manufacture it quick enough. Whereas other cloud providers work with largely commodity components. But if they want to challenge Amazon as Ellison says they need to change this.