Preface

Oracle Visual Builder (VB) is a modern, cloud-based Platform as a Service (PaaS) and hosted environment that allows you to develop robust web and mobile applications using a drag-and-drop approach. With the simplicity of the platform, you can develop and deploy web and mobile applications quickly, without the need for any extra software on your local machine.

This book will help you to learn the whole platform, end to end, with a wide variety of examples, using which you can adopt the platform quickly. The applications you develop in VB can run on both desktop and mobile devices.

The book starts with a detailed description of the platform that helps you to understand the need for the platform and how the platform addresses your business challenges. The first few chapters help you to understand the platform, set up your VB environment, and get to grips with the navigation aspect. They also cover detailed descriptions of all the building blocks of VB, including Business Objects, Service Connections, Action Chains, and variables, as well as their scopes.

In the next couple of chapters, you'll start building web applications and executing a lot of real-world, step-by-step use cases using various UI components such as tables, lists, input text, input dates, text areas, checkboxes, headings, buttons, visual components, and much more. The book covers various real-world scenarios that will help you to jump into your own projects and work independently.

The book includes two different use cases covering how to extend Oracle and non-Oracle applications. You will learn how to develop mobile applications for Android and iOS. You will also learn how to enable a mobile application to run as a Progressive Web App (PWA). We have created a separate web application to show you how to interact with a workflow developed in Processes, using a unified platform to initiate and manage process instances.

One chapter is dedicated to showcasing how to enable security for your applications with a working example. In VB, you can apply both role-based and data based security to develop a secure application and protect the application from unauthorized access. We will explain how to manage VB applications and talk about the various stages of an application.

In order to make your software successful and robust, you need to follow the best practices and recommendations. In one of the chapters, we explain various best practices and recommendations that you need to adopt right from the start if you want to develop highly scalable applications. We cover various techniques to debug and troubleshoot VB applications. In the last chapter, you will learn how to use Visual Builder Studio (VBS) to manage the life cycle of your application code.

By the end of this book, you will be proficient in Oracle VB and will be able to work independently on your live projects.

I wish you all the best in your learning and taking your first step here. I hope you enjoy reading this book; thank you for buying it.