APEX or ADF?

I am a little bit confused by Oracle. In the APEX homepage, there is a link called "Oracle Application Express for Oracle Forms Developers". Does Oracle recommends our Oracle Forms developer to move to JDeveloper/ADF (plus JHeadstart?) or Application Express? I am wondering if Oracle will make the Application Express to include a library of AJAX capabilities that we can call by using Javascript or PL/SQL API's.

HI,
By me depends from:
1- Usability. (interactivity / ajax stuff / old client server stuff).
2- Maintance.
3- Graphic design.
4- Reusability.
5- Rad approach.
6- New Know-how.
Currently studying ADF and using apex since quite an year.
From a first look adf seems better in point 1-2-3-4, since the layout layer and logic / db layer is more separated.
The user interface appear more easy to manage (GUI / CSS as well).
In APEX you have simply to find your approach (you have as well with J-developer such it has a lot of different technology you can use, but if you use only ADF).
I tend to move complex code to DB (procedure, function, trigger, function returning par query) and leave simple query in apex.
However apex remain a good choice if you have clear project requirements and your app has not particular usability / GUI requirements (it's good if you can use a standard template).
PL / SQL synthax is embedded in apex itself so this made very RAD.
A lot of other usefull features are built-in.
For sure ADF need more study than apex for a developer used to PL/SQL and Forms.
So it need as well more know-how investment.
Apex lacks in GUI by me: i found template writing feature very undocumented and here an in depth tutorial there would be great help.This is way under my opinion there's non one sharing his template (they are a difficult feature to menage if you are more used to PL/SQL stuff than WEB programming).
However under my opinion is quite difficult to choose w/o practice on them(apex / adf).
I would choose apex for little project with production time of maximum 1/2 months (quite complex stuff - Tables < 30).
I would choose Adf if the project is bigger than above.
If using apex, keep particular attention to what user expect from interface if they move from a client / server interface (access / VB6 / Forms) and you have to migrate an existing application.
bye
Message was edited by:
Marcello Nocito

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