Tools and Techniques for Access -> Oracle Conversion.

Hi All,

I'm looking for some advice and comments with regards the following scenario:-

My company has recently moved a Visual Basic application from an MSAccess back end to Oracle 7.3.3

The application has two components - a kind of data browser VB (now version 5) application which allows users to view data in different ways. This application has been ported successfully and is running well under Oracle.

However, the other part of the application is a MS Access application, used primarily for data entry. It was originally written for the native access tables of the previous version and was then modified to support the Oracle version by attaching the Oracle tables to the Access database and accessing them as if they were native. There are about 90 tables which are accessed through Access forms, with extensive use of sub-forms.

We would now like to drop Access altogether and are looking at possible solutions in terms of tools and techniques for re-developing this database application.

What is the best solution for this - I have used traditional VB Client-server techniques on other projects but would really like to use something which is more intuitive and less code intensive than VB5. I'm really looking for something with the ease of Access when designing database forms but which works well with Oracle.

Our current thoughts are to use our present skills base (VB) and develop the application in that, the disadvantage being the amount of low-level coding required to support the data access screens. We've also thrown around the idea of a "Form Generator" - written in VB which dynamically creates the input forms based on the table definitions - has anyone tried this? We also plan to look at Oracle's development tools before making a decision.

Any thoughts, experiences or comments would be most welcome.

Regards,

Brendon Colloty.

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