Long live Oracle Forms - New Statement of Direction

Oracle (Grant Ronald) published today (15th March 2012) an updated Statement of Direction for Oracle Forms and Reports.

The major statement within this Statement of Direction is:

Oracle has no plan to discontinue support of Oracle Forms. Furthermore, a new version of Forms, Oracle Forms 12c, is planned for delivery as a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c.

Thats really a clear and positive statement from Oracle :-)

 
The complete Statement of Direction can be found under following link: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/issue-archive/2010/toolssod-3-129969.pdf

Lets wait for Oracle Forms & Reports 12c :-)

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Oracle Forms 11g Release 2 (11.1.2.0.0) now for Linux x86-64 available

Last week you could read in my blog post "Oracle Forms 11g Release 2 (11.1.2.0.0) available" that Oracle Forms 11g Release 2 is available for Linux x86 and Windows x86. Now Oracle released also the Linux x86-64 version of Oracle Forms & Reports 11g Release 2 (11.1.2.0.0).

The download can be found under http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/forms/downloads/index.html

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Oracle Forms 11g Release 2 (11.1.2.0.0) available

Oracle released the latest version of Oracle Forms 11g Release 2 (11.1.2.0.0) for Windows x86 and Linux x86 today.

The download can be found under: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/forms/downloads/index.html

There is also a short new features paper available under http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/forms/forms11gr2newfeatures-497502-en-gb.pdf

The necessary installation documentation can be found under http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E24269_01/index.htm

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Oracle Forms Load Balancing

Load Balancing for Oracle Forms Applications is more and more required and used, but in many cases you don't have the budget for a Hardware Load Balancer.

The first choice is mostly Oracle WebCache to use as a Load Balancer, but as I see in many projects this solution is sometimes really slow. Another alternative is to use Oracle HTTP Server 1.3.31 out of the Oracle Application Server Companion CD 10.1.2.0.2 and configure a Load Balancing for your Oracle Forms Application. But be aware, that you can't use the Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) 2.0.52 out of the Companion CD, because the mod_oc4j of the OHS 2.0.52 is not compatible with the OC4J from the Oracle AS 10.1.2.0.2.
A complete description how to configure the Load Balancing with the OHS 1.3.31 you can find in the Oracle TechNet.

To check the status of your OHS Load Balancer you can use the oc4j-service URL http://ohsserver:port/oc4j-service?cmd=p
From the first feelings this OHS Load Balancer seems to be faster, then the usage of Oracle WebCache as a Load Balancer.

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SUN's JRE 1.6 Certification for Oracle Forms

Since a short time SUN's JRE 1.6.0_04 is now certified for usage of Oracle Forms 10g Release 2.
The only pre-requirement is that the Patchset 3 (10.1.2.3.0) for the Oracle Application Server (Oracle AS) must be applied.

The installation of the Patchset 3 for the Oracle AS normally don't cause any problems. My first tests with the JRE 1.6.0 shows, that the initial startup time (loading of the Applet) is faster :-) Additional informations about my tests will be posted later.

Original Statement from Oracle Technology Network:
"We have finished the certification of Sun's JRE 1.6.0_04 for use with patch set 3 of the Application Server that was released two weeks ago. No issue were encountered and no additional patches are needed to run the Forms client with 1.6 of the JRE. The certification was done with Firefox 2.0 and MS Internet Explorer 7."

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WebUtil and Oracle AS 10.1.2 PatchSet 2 Problem

Original posted 13th Oct 2007:

During the last weeks I faced with two customers some problems concerning WebUtil and Oracle AS 10.1.2.2.0, e.g. a Reports Call over WebUtil was not working or the WebUtil function file_open_dialog was not working a.s.o. Under Oracle AS 10.1.2.0.2 everything was working fine.

The problem came out of the PatchSet 2 (Patch-No. 4960210) which didn't apply the frmwebutil.jar to the Oracle AS you wanted to patch. To solve this problem just follow these steps:

1. unzip the PatchSet 2 to any directory which you prefer
2. go to the directory /Disk1/stage/Patches/oracle.developer.forms.builder/10.1.2.2.0/1/DataFiles/ in your unzipped PatchSet 2
3. Place the jar utility of the Oracle AS into your $PATH with following command: export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/jdk/bin:$PATH
4. Extract the needed frmwebutil.jar from the Java archive webutil.2.2.jar with following command: jar xf webutil.2.2.jar frmwebutil.jar0
   Attention: the filename to extract is frmwebutil.jar0 (=Zero)
   
5. Make a backup copy of the actual frmwebutil.jar in your $ORACLE_HOME with following comand: mv $ORACLE_HOME/forms/java/frmwebutil.jar $ORACLE_HOME/forms/java/frmwebutil.jar.save
6. Copy the extracted frmwebutil.jar0 to your $ORACLE_HOME with following command: cp frmwebutil.jar0 $ORACLE_HOME/forms/java/frmwebutil.jar
   

After these steps just restart your Oracle AS or at least restart the OC4J Instance OC4J_BI_Forms and test your Forms Application with your WebUtil functions.

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Network Traffic in Oracle Forms

Original posted 4th Oct 2007:

Regularly I get the questions from my customers "What is the network traffic in my Forms applications?". A simple way to display the number of transmitted bytes and number of round trips is to add the parameter networkStats=true in your Named Configuration inside your formsweb.cfg configuration file. Additionally you have to modify the corresponding base*.htm or webutil*.htm as follows:

<PARAM NAME="networkStats" VALUE="%networkStats%">

Inside the Tag <EMBED...> add following:

networkStats="%networkStats%"

After the modifications startup your Forms application and in the status bar of your application you'll find on the button right side a counter n:m. Where n = number of transmitted bytes and m = number of round trips.

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