Oracle Statement of direction

Oracle Forms Statement of Direction

As a tools leader for more than 20 years, Oracle has a long and extremely successful history with Oracle Forms. Much of this success can be attributed to the on-going evolution of Oracle Forms with the emergence of new technologies. This allowed Oracle customers to preserve their investments and take advantage of the latest technologies without having to rewrite their applications, while providing a RAD environment for building new applications.

Oracle Forms allows applications to be seamlessly upgraded from a character mode interface or a Client/Server architecture to a Web deployed environment, while retaining most of the user interface as well as the business logic. The latest release of Oracle Forms -- Oracle9i Forms, a component of Oracle9i Developer Suite and Oracle9i Application Server -- is yet another big step in the evolution of the product. The new focus for Oracle9i Forms is to allow Forms applications deployed on the Web to integrate and communicate with other applications and technologies. This enables the new features in Oracle9i Forms to focus on integrating your applications with the Oracle9i Application Server, as well as communicating with other technologies, such as Java, XML, and Web Services.

Oracle9i Forms

To ensure the success of its customers at a time where more and more businesses are running on the Web, Oracle has been exclusively focusing the last few years of its R&D efforts on simplifying and optimizing Oracle9i Forms for building and deploying Web-based applications. Oracle9i Forms not only allows Forms developers to deploy their Forms applications to the Web, but also provides many new features for Forms applications to integrate and interoperate with other technologies. Some of these new integration and interoperability features include:

7 Single Sign-on

Oracle9i Forms applications share the same credentials with any other web based application independently of the technology (Oracle9iAS Portal, JSPs, and so on). Moreover, users only need a single username and password for all applications.

7 Java Importer

Oracle9i Forms applications can communicate from the middle tier with any other application exposing a Java API.

7 Standard deployment

The Forms Listener Servlet allows HTTP and HTTPS standard communication between the client and the Oracle9i Application Server in the same way as any other Web-based application.

7 Client side Java Integration

JavaBeans and Pluggable Java Components (PJCs) extend the capabilities of the Forms client, replicate features available in Client/Server, and customize the user interface.

7 Integrated management

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides a single interface for the administrator to manage the Oracle9i Database and all of the pieces of the Oracle9i Application Server, including Forms applications.

For a complete list of Oracle9i Forms new features, please refer to the Oracle Technology Network (OTN)1 web site, specifically the Oracle9i Forms New Features whitepaper2.

Future Releases of Oracle Forms

Oracle is committed to continue developing, improving and supporting Oracle Forms. Oracle9i Forms is one of the most productive environments for building and deploying rich client applications to the Web. Since the beginning, Oracle Forms has been a very important part of the technology stack of Oracle's own application suite -- Oracle E-Business Suite -- which proves the level of productivity and scalability delivered by the product.

With a large install base and hundreds of thousands of Forms developers around the world, the Forms community is highly active. This can be seen from the number of downloads of Oracle Forms software (10,000 downloads every month!); traffic on the OTN forums; as well as user group forums like ODTUG, etc. Oracle9i Forms continues to evolve to meet the ever-changing needs and requirements for this community.

The strategy for upcoming Oracle Forms releases is to keep focusing on features that allow integration and interoperability between Oracle Forms and other systems or technologies. This will give the opportunity for those applications to not only coexist, but also communicate with and utilize the same services from the Oracle9i Application Server.

Here is a list of some of the features planned for upcoming releases of Oracle Forms:

7 Special install type for Forms and Reports in Oracle9iAS to simplify deployment of applications

7 Support for asynchronous events from the middle tier (Advanced Queuing, JMS) 7 JavaScript API to allow communication between the Forms Client and other HTML applications

7 Improved performance and scalability when calling from Forms to Java on the middle tier

7 Better integration between the Forms client and the browser desktop, such as the ability to read and write files on the client machine

7 Integration with Oracle9i Business Intelligence Beans for chart support

7 Enhanced capabilities with Single Sign-on (Direct communication with the LDAP server)

7 Enhanced integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager

7 Support for the standard Sun Java plug-in 1.4 (removing the need for JInitiator)

7 Additional servlet performance improvements and diagnostics

These features will be available with future versions of Oracle Forms, as part of new releases of Oracle9i Developer Suite and Oracle9i Application Server.

Oracle Forms 6i Support

In order to allow existing customers to upgrade their applications to Oracle9i Forms, Oracle Forms 6i will be supported until December 31st, 2004. It was previously considered to provide this support until 2006. Given the large number of new features requested by Oracle Forms customers for future releases, Oracle has decided to focus its development, testing and certification resources to meet these expectations, while still providing a realistic time frame to let existing customers upgrade to the latest release.

For the same reasons, Oracle Forms 6i will not be tested and certified for client/server deployment on new operating systems. For instance, Oracle Forms 6i deployment in client/server won't be supported on Windows XP (or later operating systems). However the Forms 6i Builder (design-time environment) and the Forms 6i client for Web deployment will be certified on the latest operating systems. (In fact, the Forms 6i client for Web deployment is already certified on Windows XP.)

Please check the Metalink3 Web site for the latest certifications and desupport notice information for more details.

To help customers upgrade their existing Forms applications to the Web, Oracle provides free resources -- including white papers, HowTo's, code samples, tutorials, FAQs, and more -- on the OTN Oracle Forms Upgrade Center4. The center also includes testimonials from customers who moved to the Web, so you can benefit from their experience.

Conclusion

Oracle realizes that Oracle Forms is at the foundation of many IT applications. Therefore Oracle is committed to innovation of the product, with new enhancements over subsequent releases to further simplify the integration of Forms applications in today's web environment. The latest version, Oracle9i Forms, will be the focus for all new features and operating system certifications. Customers still running older Oracle Forms versions should plan to upgrade to the latest release before the end of 2004 in order to take advantage of the new features and be able to deploy in a certified and supported environment.

1 http://otn.oracle.com

2 http://otn.oracle.com/products/forms/pdf/9inewfeatures.pdf

3 http://metalink.oracle.com

4 http://otn.oracle.com/products/forms/htdocs/upgrade

[end] Received on Mon Jan 13 2003 - 20:59:42 CET