has anyone found an alternative to APEX for building web apps directly from the Oracle database?
I know of two Web 2.0 Frameworks that are built for PL/SQL Developers. One of them is Formspider (www.theformspider.com). In the spirit of full disclosure, we built it. We are currently in public beta. The other one is Turbo-Enterprise (http://www.turbo-enterprise.com). I have no affiliation with them. Both options are equally worth considering if you are a PL/SQL Developer looking for an alternative to APEX.
i’ve bult an HTMLPLSQL-Gateway, where the HTML-Code will be 100%-generated by PLSQL. Contact stephan.kalweit@dbvbg.de. The gateway has to be started on a local or server machine, listens on a port and runs against a default database or a specified database. The gateway can handle different request to different databases.
Have a look at OpenXava. It allows you generate datacentric applications against Oracle database rapidly. It’s an open source Java Framework:
http://www.openxava.org
Disclosure: I’m OpenXava project lead.