Forms 5 on Oracle 9i migrated from 8i: some experiences ?

[Quoted] I would like to hear some experiences from some Forms gurus here, concerning to Forms 5/6i (C/S) on Oracle 8i when migrating to Oracle 9i.
I know, Forms 5 has been looong desupported, but this is the situation I have to deal with
and to which I am restricted:

Infrastructure:

1 AIX5 server as production database server for OEE 8.1.7.3 (1 instance),
1 AIX5 server as test database server for OEE 9.2.0.6. (1 instance, data are from prod server),
Internal Company Network connecting 20 shops in the near local area, Client/Server Forms 5.0.6.18.1 / Reports 3.0.5.15.0 used for company applications, that is, about 150 Forms and 300 Reports. No plans at all to migrate to iAS for some reasons beyond this topic, they will keep C/S with Forms 6i.
They have 200 users, all only company members, no access from outside.

Known problems so far:

• Implicit datatype conversion between NUMBER and VARCHAR2 is handled more restrictive in 9i DB, there are some hints in the papers. So I dagged through all stored prcedures and made the necessary changes (TO_NUMBER ...).
• Problems with CHAR returning stored procedured, or CHAR parameter taking procedures when connecting with Forms 5. I had NO hints in this case ... OK, replacing CHAR with VARCHAR2 does the job, but that was a pritty surprise ...
• All Form Modules have to be recompiled for 9i DB, and then those modules cannot be run against the old 8i DB (because of different time stamps of the packages).

Remaining questions:

1. Just for my own curiousness, I would like to know *why* CHAR is becoming a problem when recompiling a Form 5 for Oracle 9i; the problem is likely to be valid for more actual version, too. I mean AFAIK, Oracle has *not* deprecated CHAR as a datatype ?
2. Concerning Forms 5 for Oracle 8i / 9i, are there some more hidden "riffs in the shallow water" to be aware of besides implicit conversion and CHAR difficulties ?

Thank You in advance,
Jan Gelbrich Received on Tue Aug 09 2005 - 14:32:29 CEST