Oracle 9iAS: Forms compatibility between NT and Unix

We are finally being allowed to upgrade our maintenance application at work.

It's currently running on HP-UX 10.20 and Oracle 7.3.4.5.0.0. The most used screen is the work order entry screen and is an Xwindows/Motif Forms 4.5 screen. (It runs on our PCs via Hummingbird Exceed, but we really need to get away from this for license cost reasons.) The main application that our maintenance folks use is in Forms 4.5 on Windows. We never moved to the Windows client for the work order screens because it wasn't written to automatically print to a UNIX printer on the server side as the Motif one was. (Due to the nature of our environment this is critical and can't be based on Windows printing that requires proper logon the PC.)

The new version is a web-based product done with Oracle 9iAS. We're getting some verbal cooperation from the company regarding the printing issue, which still relies on Windows printing. However, they are only releasing the AS side on WindowsNT/2000. Since this requires several thousands of dollars in new hardware and licenses, as well as being M$ related, I was not happy about this news today. According to the techie guy at the company, the forms must be recompiled for the different platforms as they were with the old Forms 4.5 stuff. All fine and good.

My question...

Are there significant compatibility problems that would seriously prevent a software vendor from doing this recompile in short order and being able to support the product on both Windows and UNIX servers? (They have UNIX expertise in house so that's not an issue for them... the release of Windows only was strictly marketshare related according to him.) I thought the whole point of having Oracle Forms and Reports in the first place was to eliminate massive headaches doing cross-platform development. (Then again, I'm not a developer, so what do I know? :)

Can someone clue me in, please?

-- 
Jeff Traigle
traigle_at_si.umich.edu
http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~traigle/