Thursday, September 4, 2008

From Oracle Forms to Enterprise 2.0 development



¿Is it possible to migrate Oracle Forms applications to Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 applications?

Now we have tools: Forms2ADF Generator and OraFormsFaces are included in JHeadstart 10.1.3.3. Also, the migration could be planned in little steps, evolution rather than a big migration. OraFormsFaces allow interoperability at the browser level between ADF and Forms runtimes. Once with ADF based applications is very easy to start to use WebCenter framework.

Additional info:

JHeadstart Developers Guide 10.1.3.3, Chapter 13

Presentation from Wilfred van der Deijl at ODTUG 2008: Integrating Oracle Forms and ADF: JHeadstart and OraFormsFaces
  • 1 + 1 = 3!
  • JHeadstart further accelerates use of OraFormsFaces
  • Generate pages with embedded Form components using Item display type “OraFormsFaces”
  • Generate Create, Delete, Save buttons that call out to embedded Oracle Form
  • Generate quick/advanced search with table page, detail form page is embedded OracleForms
  • Add security to JSF pages holding Forms Components
  • JHeadstart Form Migrator (JFM, now Forms2ADF) takes Forms menu module, and migrate the menu structure to ADF Faces, with the menu items calling JSF pages with embedded Forms
  • JFM (Forms2ADF) automates required changes to Forms

Directly from Wilfred van der Deijl blog:
Steven Davelaar (Oracle Consulting) has shown that JHeadstart will also include a new JHeadstart Forms2ADF Generator in the next version (10.1.3.3). The JHeadstart Forms2ADF Generator will take the FMB files and create the entire ADF Model (Business Components) for you. It also creates a JHeadstart application definition file based on the Forms structure. This application definition file can be used to generate the ADF Faces View and Controller layer. Both Steven and I feel that OraFormsFaces and JHeadstart make a great combination. Once you get started, you can use OraFormsFaces to integrate your existing Forms. Then over time you can migrate your application to ADF using JHeadstart. Steven is so convinced by this concept that he integrated OraFormsFaces in the upcoming version of JHeadstart (10.1.3.3). This next version can generate ADF pages that use OraFormsFaces to embed an Oracle Form.

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