By: Jacob Beasley, Director at Centroid and Kyle Berndt, Principal Consultant at Centroid — August 20, 2026
Bringing AI to Your Oracle ERP with APEX
If you’re a user of one of Oracle’s ERP solutions such as Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle JD Edwards, or Oracle PeopleSoft, then you’re probably familiar with Oracle APEX. Oracle APEX is a software development suite that is free and available for users of Oracle Databases. APEX is a low-code platform that can be used to create interactive experiences. With AI features included in Oracle AI Database, it is easier than ever to begin using AI Capabilities within your existing infrastructure and APEX.
AI in Oracle Database
Oracle AI Database now includes several key AI features that enable you to easily use AI from within Oracle Database. We’ll explore each of these features and show how you can use them from directly within Oracle APEX.
Using Generative AI with Retrieval Augmented Generation to Create a Helpful AI Assistant
With APEX, you can add an AI assistant that can access information to answer questions with accurate, up-to-date information. In this bookstore application, the assistant has access to information about the books in the system.
The data the assistant can access is easy to configure, and it can be set to use different information depending on the context. For example, it is possible to give the assistant access to a user’s past orders, which it can combine with general information about the books to provide more personalized recommendations.
Using Vector Search for More Interesting Search Results
Traditional keyword searches miss intent, but vector search finds results based on meaning and similarity. This enables users to find books that match their interests even if they do not know exactly what to search for.
For example, if a user searched for “monster”, they could get results whose titles or descriptions include words related to monster. In the example below, only one of the books shown has “monster” in its description. The rest have monster-adjacent words like “evil”, “Halloween”, “villain”, and “animals” that are semantically related to the concept of a monster.
Integrating with OCI Vision to Enhance Search Results
With APEX, you can easily integrate with OCI Vision to perform image processing. This can be useful for extracting metadata from images, such as text and objects pictured. In this example application, when a book is added or its cover image is updated, the image is sent to OCI Vision, and the discovered text and objects are stored. These results can be used to enhance search. When a user searches for “bird”, they can find books whose covers depict a bird or include the word on the cover, even if the title, description, and author do not include the word “bird”.
Using Select AI to Generate Reports from Natural Language
Oracle’s Select AI is featured within the Oracle Autonomous Database that bridges the gap between complex data structures and human language. By integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) like OCI Generative AI, it allows users to query databases using natural language prompts instead of manually writing SQL code. When a user asks a question to Select AI, the question will be turned into a prompt along with information about the database schema, and the LLM will use it to generate a SQL statement. This allows non-technical users to be able to ask questions of the database and retrieve information without needing to write SQL themselves.
Using Oracle APEX Features to Simplify Development
Easily Set Up Shared Components
APEX Shared Components let you define navigation lists, AI configurations, authentication methods, and many other items in one place and reuse them across multiple pages.
Using APEX Assistant to Help Write SQL Queries
Developers can connect APEX to Oracle Generative AI, which enables them to use the APEX assistant to help draft and refine SQL for reports, charts, and search sources. Developers can iterate faster by generating initial queries and then fine-tuning them to match business rules, with the help of an AI assistant that is aware of the underlying database schema.
Integrate with External Identity Providers for Easy Authentication
APEX supports external identity providers like Oracle Identity Cloud Service or other common OAuth providers such as Facebook or Google. This allows developers to easily set up authentication for their applications by plugging in an external provider, rather than having to implement the entire OAuth flow themselves.
Ready to unlock more from your Oracle environment?
With Oracle APEX and built-in AI capabilities, you can quickly add intelligent features—like AI assistants, semantic search, and natural language reporting—using the infrastructure you already have.
Contact Centroid to start building building smarter applications today.
