Gartner Report: “Modernization and Migration Strategies for Oracle Forms”

Grant Ronald brought this Gartner Report to attention on his blog: “Modernization and Migration Strategies for Oracle Forms“.

It’s great to see that our message brought to our customers and at our presentations is confirmed by this Gartner analysis

• Upgrade to the latest version – At the moment this is Oracle Forms 11gR2
• Modernize and integrate
• Migrate(ADF, APEX, Open Source, …)

If you want more information on this topic, you can read my article on All Things Oracle: “What’s Your Choice for Oracle Forms?“.

Oracle Forms 11gR2 released

In a previous post I wrote that Grant Ronald announced the release of Oracle Forms 11gR2 in our Oracle Open World presentation.  He didn’t announce an exact date, but it would be very soon.

Well, here it is!

The new version can be downloaded from Oracle Technology Network.
The installation footprint is reduced, it can be integrated in Oracle Access Manager and some other new features.

 

 

* Update

Client support:

• Browser support is no longer based on Operating Systems but strictly tied to the browser themselves, no matter which Operating Systems they are installed on.
• Oracle Forms is supported on both 32 bit browsers with 32 bit Oracle JRE & 64 bit browsers with 64 bit Oracle JRE combinations.

System support:

• Oracle Weblogic Server: WLS 10.3.5
• Databases: Oracle 10.2.0.4+, Oracle 11.1.0.7+, Oracle 11.2.0.1+
• 32 bit and 64 bit systems

More about certifications.

Oracle Forms 11g and Google maps integration

In last years blog post about Forms 11g Javascript integration I explained how you could call the Google Maps API from forms using JavaScript.

I captured that testcase using screentoaster.
It seems that this tool has disappeared and all the recorded sessions with it.

So, here’s a new video on youtube of this Google Map Integration, now in a demo application.
The Form is embedded in a HTML page witch contains a Google Map.

OBUG Connect, the Oracle Benelux Usergroup conference in Brussels.

Opening ceremony by Wim Coekaerts & Janny Ekelson.
Nothing much to say about this…

First keynote session was brought by Chris Leone about Oracle Fusion applications.
Applications is not my thing, but it was nice to see how everything in Fusion apps is integrated like BI and collaboration.

My first session was “The best way” by Tom Kyte, a session about doing things the “best way” or “best practices”.
Tom quoted Bryn Llewellyn on what brings you to best practices.
It depends on things from “reasoning skills” over “education” to “know oracle inside out” to “know pl/sql inside out”.

An example join two big tables(big… big tables) with little distinct values.
What will be the fastest(best) way to retrieve records for one of those distinct values: hash joins or index scans?
In a batch operation the hash joins will be the fastest, but on a screen that only shows 20 records?

So, when is something the best way?  Well, it depends…

How can you tune using TKPROF?
A best practice…
Get the facts(physical I/O, logical I/O, difference between CPU and elapsed time,…).
Infer more facts.  Know your data, know how oracle works.
Build your context.
Rule things out.
Very interesting session!

Time for lunch!

Next session was one of Lucas Jellema and Patrick Stevens: “Randstad’s modernization of organization, architecture and applications powered by Fusion Middleware”.
They explained how they transformed the IT team to work with the agile approach.
This resulted in a faster develoment(about 4 times) and a team that is more involved.
Randstad also decided to make their applications service based.
So a service layer was build around all core processes using BPEL and OSB.
The only problem is Forms, which still accesses the database directly.
The Forms application will fade away in the future to a web application in ADF…

Last session was another AMIS session by Luc Bors together with Simon Vos of bol.com: “How BOL.COM benefited from ADF”.
Bol.com decided in 2007 to move to ADF.
Some reasons to move:
- Oracle statement of direction:  exit designer
- no authorization/authentication
- forms supported datamodel, not business processes
Where did they want to go to:
- SSO
- new and extended UI
- add reporting
- no direct database access

So they introduced scrum, ADF and trained they’re inhouse (forms)developers to use JDeveloper, ADF and JHeadstart.
Now they could start to rebuild the forms application in ADF.
The pl/sql and built-ins used in forms are put in the database or, if lucky, they could use an ADF alternative.
Others(little percentage) had to be programmed in Java.

This resulted in a new application with the same functionality(allthough some additional functionality was added) as the forms application with a new look and feel.

Some interesting sessions, allthough I like to see some more demos next time.

Upgrading to Forms 11g

Grant Ronald has just published three references for Oracle Forms upgrades to 11g.
Those references can be found on his blog.

As Grant writes, it’s pretty easy to upgrade, just recompile and deploy.

A big advantage of migrating to Forms 11g is that it opens up the integration of the forms application with other technologies(eg. ADF).

Upgrade your Forms application and enter the age of fusion!

Update on “Forms 11G and DB function with result cache”

In my previous post I mentioned the problem with compiling a program unit that calls a database function with result cache.

Like I wrote in that post, the problem exists in the PL/SQL Client version.
There’s a patch available to update the PL/SQL client: Oracle Database Server Version 11.1.0.7 Patch 33.

This is a database patch, but it can also be applied to the middleware home.

After applying the patch, the program unit compiles…Problem solved!

So, go and start using Result cache!

Forms 11G and DB function with result cache

Result cache… a very cool feature in the 11g database.
If you don’t know it, this is a must read: Pl/SQL function result cache in 11g

But also watch out with it in Forms 11g.
It seems there’s a bug.
When compiling a program unit that calls a function with result cache in forms, you’ll get a compile error, which look likes this:

Error 801 at line 7, column 2: internal error[*** ASSERT at file pdw1.c, line 4061; PSDGON missing. Can't get object number; XNSPC1PTEST__P[7,2]

This is logged on “My Oracle Support” as a bug.
It’s not a forms bug, but a PL/SQL Client bug.
And this “bad” version of the PL/SQL client is used in forms11g(or in general FMW11g).
It works with older and newer versions of the PL/SQL Client(Forms 10g + function result cache should work).
Hopefully there’s a patch soon, so that everybody can use result cache

Oracle Service Bus : Agility in Action

Yesterday I followed a session regarding OSB given by Jeff Davis, it was an interesting session with a lot of demo’s regarding using business services and proxy services.

Topics that we’re interesting to me during the session and I would like to share with the community:

• Coherence ships with OSB/Weblogic which gives you the possiblity to cache service results to speed up performance. As Jeff mentioned a case could be that your users need to get the latest financial results each day which is a long running business process. This process can be launched asynchronously when the user is logged on in the background. The result of the process is then put in the service cache so when the user needs the information it’s shown to him without delay. The Service Result Caching functionality is integrated within OSB 11G, Release 1.
• OSB 11g, Release 1 is also fully integrated with Enterprise Repository which gives you the possiblity to index all your existing services using your metadata such as XML, XSD, WSDL, … Using Enterprise Repository the impact of changes made to individual services is clear which makes your release management process a lot easier! Make sure to check out the features and functionality delivered by the Enterprise Repository to be able to govern your services throughout the enterprise.
• OSB12C (C stands for Cloud) is the next upcoming release of OSB which holds a lot of new interesting functionality such as templating/prototyping services, development is integrated within Jdeveloper, … The fact that the development will be integrated within Jdeveloper gives your development team the possibility to use one and only one IDE to have E2E development from database to business components, to services such as bpel, osb, external services, business rules untill the end-user interface

During the demo Jeff showed how you can expose functionality of an EJB 3.0/2.1 module as a service using business services and proxy services. You can transform from an EJB 3.0 business service to an EJB 2.1 Proxy Service using XQuery and the JEJB protocol.