I totally agree with you on that. One could maybe look at the view as a separate way to provide inter database access to the data as an alternative to a JSON/REST based approach or similar for other application. As APEX resides in the database, it would be crazy to force it to use REST to access data that is just “one schema away”, as it would be crazy to convert data to some kind of object deliverable by a table function just to pass it between schemas.

Hi Jürgen,

The term SmartDB was defined by Bryn Llewellyn. Here’s the relevant slide (a screenshot of his SmartDB talk at Kscope18):

The point of this blog post was to show that it is quite difficult to produce something like a SmartDB compliant application. As mentioned in the conclusion, beside some demo apps I have never seen that in real live.

IMO the SmartDB paradigm is too extreme. After various discussions with Bryn and others I decided to define a more practical paradigm. PinkDB. SmartDB is a subset of PinkDB. I’m not against stored objects. Quite the contrary. However, I still like to use views as part of a database API. You find my thoughts also in this interview, it was published in the Red Stack Magazine 03/2020 on page 70-71.

In the “Differences to SmartDB” section of the PinkDB blog post I said the following:

APEX is another example. You develop efficiently with APEX when your reports and screens are based on views (or tables). Using stored objects only to access Oracle database sources is working against the tool.

This should make my position regarding “views” clear.

Thanks,
Philipp

What do you think?