Yet another in my series on the Ash Framework.
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Thanks for the article and presentation of benefits of introducing Ash.
Do you see great value in bringing Ash to an existing system if the underlying database is not supported by existing data layers “Oracle in our case” ?
Since your system is backed by Oracle, the question is whether Ash still brings enough to justify adoption. I think it does. The auth system, validation, the action pipeline, and the structure Ash brings to your domain more than pay for themselves. It is also low risk to try. Pick one slice of your domain and wire it up to your existing API. If it does not feel worth it, you can step back out easily.
If someone is starting a new Elixir project and considering Oracle for persistence, I would be cautious. You can build an Ash extension, but you will own all the quirks that come with Oracle’s closed system, including its types, pagination rules, DDL quirks, and JSON behavior. You will get no support from Oracle, and because most Elixir developers work with open-source projects, you are likely to find less community help.
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Thank you for the thoughtful and balanced feedback — I really appreciate the clarity in how you framed both the strengths of Ash and the risks around Oracle.
Just to clarify our situation: we’re effectively locked into Oracle because many of our enterprise systems (and dependencies from other teams) are tightly coupled to it. So while we don’t prefer Oracle from a developer-experience perspective, we have to operate within that environment for now.
