Oracle Introduces APEXlang to Manage AI-Generated Code at Enterprise Scale
As machine-generated software becomes the norm, Oracle is tackling the governance and maintainability challenges with a new abstracted language designed to work with AI coding agents.
The shift toward AI-assisted development is creating fresh headaches for large organizations: code written by machines still requires human oversight, maintenance and comprehension. While low-code platforms originally aimed to accelerate how quickly applications could be built, artificial intelligence is now fundamentally reshaping that objective. Oracle Corp. unveiled its strategy ahead of its annual conference, with Mike Hichwa, senior vice president of software engineering at Oracle, declaring that the inflection point in software development has already arrived.
In 2025, the majority of code was human-authored, and in 2026 and forever afterwards, the majority of code is going to be machine-generated. We're probably not going back. What we've done to address this change is we invented our own language. We call it APEXlang.
Mike Hichwa, senior vice president of software engineering at Oracle
Vibe coding meets enterprise governance
APEXlang functions as a highly abstracted application definition language that prioritizes intent over implementation details. Oracle rolled out the language alongside the APEX AI Application Generator and is making its grammar, skills and documentation freely available so coding agents including Anthropic PBC's Claude and OpenAI Group PBC's Codex can produce it. Additionally, Oracle is collaborating with OpenAI to optimize model training for generating the language more effectively, Hichwa noted.
What you're generating actually matters, because once you generate it, and you generate it 100 times or 1,000 times within your enterprise, then you're going to need to maintain it. You're going to need to look after it. What people want with their portfolio of applications, they want consistency, they want governance, they want ease of understanding.
Mike Hichwa
The governance layer extends to the runtime environment as well. The APEX engine interprets generated APEXlang code and receives monthly patches and updates from Oracle, eliminating the need for customers to manually maintain their generated applications. This architecture is also intended to minimize what Hichwa calls AI slop, since a concise definition is far simpler to review than extensive machine-generated code.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/d9tJerqIOuA?feature=oembed
What we're generating is much, much smaller, much more human understandable, so it is less sloppy because it is more abstracted. It's like a CliffsNotes. It's not the full book.
Mike Hichwa
Read more
Rising Security Budgets Fail to Contain Shadow AI Risks, DNSFilter Report Finds
Organizations are increasing cybersecurity spending but leaving critical gaps in AI governance, with nearly half of IT workers unaware of unauthorized AI tools already connected to their networks.
Forrester: AI agents will drive financial services transformation, but only 5% of banks will execute successfully
A new Forrester Research report predicts that 2027 will mark a shift from digital banking to AI-driven finance, with AI assistants reshaping customer acquisition and advisory services—though most banks will struggle to scale beyond rebranded legacy systems.
Oracle Hardens Database Security Against AI-Discovered Vulnerabilities and Autonomous Agents
Advanced AI models are uncovering hundreds of software flaws and bypassing traditional application-level security controls. Oracle is responding with accelerated patching cycles, real application testing, and a shift of security enforcement down to the database layer.