HomeAuthor InterviewsInterview with Ankur Jain

Interview with Ankur Jain

Ankur Jain is the author of Effortless App Development with Oracle Visual Builder, we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.

Q: What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?

Ankur: Oracle Integration Cloud, Visual Builder, API Platform, Java

Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?

Ankur: Writing a book has always been my dream. I’ve tried to write a book twice in the past but could not process it further due to obstacles. So when Packt approached me to write a book, I immediately accepted that offer and started with the process.

Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?

Ankur: Since I have experience in writing blogs, it did not take much time to start writing the book. But yes, writing books is different than writing blogs so I did research for a couple of days and then started with it.

Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?

Ankur: As I was about to complete the book, Oracle released a new version of the product due to which the UI and navigations changed and new features got introduced. So, I revisited all chapters and made changes to accommodate the new version. I suggest that every author should stay informed about the newest versions and write their book accordingly, otherwise you may need to revisit the whole book.

Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?

Ankur: The VB is the hottest product on the market these days. Although it’s new, it has already been adopted by lots of customers, especially those who have SaaS applications and want to extend their applications using the low-level code approach. The VB is the best fit when customers want to quickly develop an extension for their SaaS application at a lower cost. Needless to say, this leading technology is all set to take over the IT industry in the future.

Q. Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?

Ankur: Before my book, only a single book on VB was available in the market, written keeping the early version of VB in mind. VB has evolved since then, with a lot of new features that are not present in the previous book. My book covers all the new features along with useful explanations and lots of real-time examples. The book covers SaaS extensions and best practices for developing applications, and shows you how to troubleshoot the applications and manage the VB application code using Visual Builder Studio, not covered in the already available book. I’m sure these new features will help readers to increase their productivity and reduce the research needed to develop their applications.

A major highlight is that this book is reviewed by Shay Shmeltzer, Product Manager of VB, who’s also written the foreword. This book is a Community Edition which makes the book unique compared with that of the competitor’s.

Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?

Ankur: The goal of this book is to give in-depth knowledge of the technology so that readers can adapt it easily and quickly. Also, I request the readers to follow all the examples, which are designed to help with their real-time projects as well. Read all chapters carefully to understand each and every concept well.

Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?

Ankur: My advice for each and every reader is to execute all the examples in the instances which are demonstrated in the book. Also, read the best practices carefully and adopt them from the beginning of their projects.

Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?

Ankur: Yes, visit the following page: http://techsupper.com. You can find my YouTube channel here https://www.youtube.com/Techsupper

Q. Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?

Ankur: Create an account on the Oracle Cloud community to raise your queries and get answer at earliest https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/

Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?

Ankur: Packt team is very responsive and provides guidance at each and every step. Yes, I recommend Packt to every aspiring author.

Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?

Ankur: Yes, I’m part of the Oracle Cloud community https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/.

Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?

Ankur: I read the Oracle newsletter to keep myself up to date. I also read the What’s New document by Oracle to know about all the new features of OIC and VB. You can also follow the Oracle document https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/app-builder-cloud/abcsw/index.html.

Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?

Ankur: I’m a very organized person and prioritize all my professional and personal work. My first priority is my office work, and when I got time to, I wrote the book. I know that everyone says they don’t have the time to do the extra work, but you have to make time to get a new achievement and that’s what I do. Set your goals and work accordingly.

Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?

Ankur: The most important thing to ensure before starting to write a book is that you should be up to date with the technology on which you are writing the book. Use the most recent version of the product to write the book, and read articles from time to time to know about all the new features that are getting released during the writing of the book to accommodate new features in the book. If you don’t do so, you may need to write the entire book again if reviewers find any version mismatch.

You can find Ankur’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here

Effortless App Development with Oracle Visual Builder– Available on Amazon.com