Oracle Forms to Apex /HTMLDB Migration

Its a long debated question for many organizations whether to continue with Forms /Reports , or Migrate to Oracle Product or third party product. I would consider below things before making a decision.

1. Avaialability Oracle Forms/Reports skilled staff


2. Usage of Java in the application


3. Client side validations


4. Dependancy on Java runtime environment (sun jre/jinitiator/ms jvm)


5. Difficulty in integrating with reports, other products and webservices.

If your application is currently developed in Forms and you have skilled staff its better to continue in that. However if you need to integrate java/webservices , embedd html in the screens and do not want any dependancy on client side javavthen its better to migrate to any product such as Apex, jdeveloper/OAF.

(From my experience I found that many end users find it difficult to have the JRE installed and work with webutil/pjc).

Now the best methods to Migrate to Apex from forms

1. Forms 6i or lower versions

Lower versions of forms 6i , its better upgrade to Forms 6i and using the ifcmp60.exe generate the documentation for the forms. Use the option forms_doc =yes . Note that converting an fmb to a Fmt wont help since all program units will be removed.

2 Forms 10g or lower versions web deployed.Lower versions of forms 10g has to be upgraded to 10g R2 and use the frmf2xml.bat to convert the fmb to an XML format. From XML format using a XML parser we can get the whole code including the program units. Converting an FMB to an XML format from the builder wont help since it will not have any program units.Mapping for Forms /Apex 1. Move any plls used in forms to the dabase package.2 Remove any OLE/OCX since they are obsolete and needs to be redesigned.

Forms Apex Mapping SL Form Apex

1 Module Page
2 Trigger Process/Javascript
3 Alert JavaScript Window
4 Library/pll Database package
5 Datablock Region
6 Control block HTML region
7 Canvas Page
8 Editor
9 LOV Lov
10 Object group similar to template/CSS
11 Global values Application Items/Page 0
12 Popup Menu Java Script menu
13 Program Units Application Process/Computation
14 Property lass Templates
15 Record Group
16 Reports Interactive Reports
17 Visual Attributes templates/CSS
18 Window
19 Login Dialog Page 101
20 Hint Help text
21 Block Item order HTML tab index
22 Exception Handling Custom page/exception


Forms Apex Trigger Mapping SL Form/Trigger Apex Description

1 When-New-Form-Instance login process Page 101
2 Pre-form login process
3 Key-up Javascript on-key up
4 Key-down Javascript on-key down
5 When-mouse-click Javascript on-click
6 Pre-update process /source On Submit - After Computations and Validations
7 Pre-insert process /source On Submit - After Computations and Validations
8 Key-prev-item
9 Key-next-item
10 key-scrup
11 When-button-pressed javascript on click
12 On-Error Custom /Exception
13 on-Message Exception