Two Days of APEX Changes in Four Hours

This week I made a change to an APEX app that manages evaluation products. The requirement was to allow evaluation products to be entered in one country and manufactured in another country.

In the end, it involved these code changes:

• Tables: one new table, a DML script, and four new columns

• Views: 24 new columns across five views

• PL/SQL: 373 new or changed lines across two packages

• APEX: 37 component changes across 13 pages

• Testing: five new scenarios

A year and a half ago, I would have allowed two days for this. It took four hours.

How did I do it?

• One hour using Codex with GPT-6 Astra (medium reasoning) to create and review a 700-line APEX Builder guide, a 400-line DB object change plan, and five test scenarios. I chose Astra because planning the change required reasoning across the entire codebase and the requirements document.

• One hour making the APEX Builder changes. During that hour, Codex used GPT-5.6 Sol with low reasoning to implement the database changes and run 15 unit tests in 30 minutes. With a detailed plan already in place, I chose Sol for speed.

• One hour reviewing and refining the code changes.

• One hour testing and fixing issues.

Three of those four hours went into planning, review, testing, and fixes. The agent saved time on implementation while I stayed responsible for the result.

You probably noticed I didn't use APEXlang (the client is still on APEX 24.1). With APEXlang, agents can edit the app too, reducing the time even more.

If you have an APEX enhancement or some refactoring you have been putting off, try a coding agent. Your old estimate may no longer apply.