Reviewing the features and benefits of VB

It is worthwhile knowing the benefits VB offers. In this fast-growing world, organizations are looking for a development tool that can help to deliver responsive web and mobile applications quickly and efficiently. VB allows quick development, requires no additional software cost, is a drag and drop tool, has a user-friendly interface to develop UIs, and more. It's a browser-based tool that helps to deliver engaging web and mobile applications.

VB is best suited for situations when you need to extend Oracle and non-Oracle SaaS applications quickly. Using the inbuilt catalog of the Oracle SaaS application, you can extend the Oracle SaaS application very easily.

Let's try to understand with an example. Let's say there is a set of external users who want to access the Oracle SaaS procurement module in order to create Purchase Orders (POs), approve POs, list POs, and so on, but the organization is not willing to accord access to the Oracle SaaS application to the external users.

If the organization has VB, then as a solution, the organization can plan to build a web or mobile application in VB and create different flows and pages. Developers can use the built-in catalog of Oracle SaaS to communicate with the Oracle SaaS application in VB and create/approve/list POs and so on in real time from the VB application directly instead of logging into the Oracle SaaS application.

Once the VB application is developed, you can deploy it with a single click and provide access to the external users so that external users can use SaaS application functionality using the VB application as required.

The features that VB offers are as follows:

• Embedded database: Oracle VB comes with an embedded database that helps you to manage transactional data. Using the data manager of the embedded database, you can import and export bulk data quickly from .csv or .xlsx files. This database has a set of features that makes it easy to maintain the data in the database.

  Important Note:

  An embedded database has a limit of 5 GB storage space.

• Connect to different database: Oracle VB is provisioned with a local database automatically, but VB gives you the option to switch the local database to another Oracle database such as Database as a Service (DBaaS) or Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP). Once you connect to a different database, all the data can be managed by the corresponding database.
• Connect to external REST APIs: Oracle VB allows you to communicate with external REST APIs using a declarative approach without a single line of code. You can connect to any type of REST API and interact with external applications in real time.
• Integration with Oracle SaaS application: VB allows out-of-the-box connectivity with Oracle SaaS that helps to extend Oracle SaaS application functionality. With the help of an built-in catalog, VB streamlines the process of communicating with Oracle SaaS applications in real time without any extra effort.
• Connect to Processes: VB allows you to interact with the Processes Cloud Service (PCS), which helps you to fetch lists of tasks and take necessary action (approve or reject) from the VB application directly.
• Web application development: VB allows you to deploy responsive web applications that run on the VB server engine without the need for any additional servers. However, VB web applications can be deployed on any external server but the VB features will be limited.

  The following screenshot shows one of the pages of a VB web application:

Figure 1.1 – Web application

• Mobile application development: VB also allows you to develop a mobile application and build it for Android and iOS. You can build Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) from mobile applications too with just a single click.

  The following screenshot shows one of the pages of a mobile application:

Figure 1.2 – Mobile application

• Custom code: In addition to dragging and dropping out-of-the-box components, you have the choice to extend your VB app's functionality using HTML5 and JavaScript.
• Inbuilt security framework: Security is one of the top priorities of web and mobile applications, especially when the application is exposed over the internet. VB comes with an embedded security framework that allows you to secure data as well as applications. Application security alone is not enough as anyone can spoof requests in between, change roles, and steal data. So, along with application security, data security is also required.

With the previously listed features, VB is one of the strongest cloud platforms and allows you to build cross-platform applications and solve all the organization's problems.

The benefits of VB are as follows:

• Unified platform: The complete life cycle of application development is managed by a single unified platform. Every stage of the application is managed by a single browser-based tool.
• Quick development: Web and mobile applications can be developed and deployed in a single day using VB as the entire development is just drag and drop. VB provides a user-friendly wizard and other browser-based tools that allow fast development.
• No additional software: To develop and deploy web and mobile applications, you don't require any additional software to be installed on your local machine. You just require a browser, good internet connectivity, and a VB subscription, and then you can start your application development.
• No additional cost: Apart from VB's cost, you don't need to pay anything to build web and mobile applications.
• Easy access to cloud app data and OIC integrations via the catalog: VB provides an built-in catalog to provide access to Oracle SaaS data and integrations developed in Oracle Integration Cloud.
• Single-click deployment: Using the unified platform, you can bring the application to the world with just a single click.
• Rich set of UI components: There is a big list of UI components that allow you to create interactive web and mobile applications.
• Easy creation/packaging of mobile apps

Having discussed the features and benefits of VB, next we'll explain what tools are required to start development on VB.