In this post I will describe the process of installing Forms 11g. In this previous post: Download Oracle Forms 11g Software I described where the software could be downloaded.
After extracting the two downloaded files ..disk1_1of2 and ..disk1_2of2 I got 4 (;-)) disk directories (disk1, disk2, disk3 and disk4).

I doubleclicked the setup.exe in the root of the disk1 folder. The following splash screen popped up:

After a while the following screen pops-up:

The interface of the installatation of Oracle Forms (and Reports and Discoverer) has signifantly changed. Step 1 out of 16….

Before proceeding make sure you have installed the web logic server. I installed Jdeveloper 11g before so I already had the weblogic server installed.
The oc4j that I used for running Oracle Forms 10g on my laptop is no longer supported. The same goes for Oracle Jinitiator: No longer supported. Instead off that you have to use the sun java plugin (also owned by Oracle now).

Choose the correct installation type.

Checking prerequisites….

Choose the Oracle Middleware location. This is where I installed the middleware home of Jdeveloper 11g

Choose the correct components. I want to install Oracle Forms and Reports including the correct server components.

And after accepting the defaults in the following steps I finally could choose [Finish] and the installation starts.

After half an hour of installation I reached 100%, but I was not able to push the [Finish] button. What is happening? In the left window I see that after the installation process the configuration process should start. But all I see is Setup Completed. After staring some minutes to the screen I suddenly see that the 100% progress decreases to 97%???>

The installer installs a Oneoff patch which probably was downloaded before from the internet. This is new, in earlier versions you could install Oracle Forms without having a connection to the internet. You had to monitor metalink to see if there any patches and had to install them separately. I am wondering if there is an option in Forms Builder to check for updates, like there is in Jdeveloper!

After installing the OneOff Patch the configuration is started.

After 90 minutes the installation is finished. Let’s see if I can start forms builder. In the start menu it is listed under Oracle Classic instance. (on OTN it is called traditional.....)

And it works.

Unfortunately I see no option check for updates.

This day I decided to install Oracle Forms 11G on my laptop. First step:
Download the software. Usually this is the easiest part. Just go to otn
go to Developer Tools and choose traditional tools.



Following a few links I got to the following page:


So far so good. Normally I would get suspicious (Fusion Middleware??) but the phrase (contains forms 11.1.1.) gave me confidence.
Next page:



Now I was confused. In my opnion Oracle Forms is a development tool, but the For Development section says: Jdeveloper+ADF. Where can I download Oracle Forms? As there was only one valid option (forms is not for deployment ?) I decided to download and install

Oracle JDeveloper 11g Rel 1 (11.1.1.1.0) (JDeveloper + ADF)

After download and install I got exactly what Oracle said I would get: Jdeveloper + ADF. No Oracle Forms. (Afterwards this was ok, I had not installed Jdeveloper11g yet)
After some surfing on OTN I could not found another download area with Oracle Forms so I decided to navigate back to the fusion middleware page. Finally I decided to push the download button in the For Deployment section and to my big surprise there was a link to download Oracle Forms:




UPDATE:
I probably was not the only one that could not find the software. See Jan Carlin's blog:

http://groundside.com/blog/JanCarlin.php?title=finding_oracle_forms_on_otn_1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I developed Oracle Forms applications for many years. I also did some minor APEX projects. I read about the ability of Apex 3.2 to migrate Oracle Forms applications and I was wondering how this is working.

First I upgraded my Apex 3.1.2. to 3.2. This was quite easy. Download the zipfile from OTN, extract it, started the good old sqlplus against my local XE database, ran a script and everything was ok.
Then I started to read the manual about the migration process. The picture that I found there was very clear:


and there was a little roadmap as well.

First I had to create a little form. I decided to create an extremely simple form. I wondered how the migration works I'm not (yet) interested in migrating complex forms.
(when I look at the image above this should be possible as well. Pll, olb and mmb files can be migrated too).
Using the Oracle Forms wizards a simple form on dept was created. When I run the form it looks like this:



A simple CRUD (create,retrieve, update, delete) screen on Dept. The resulting fmb is darwin.fmb.

The first step in the migration process is creating an XML file of the fmb file using frmf2xml.bat.
This command does the job:
C:\oracle\10gR2\bin\frmf2xml.bat darwin.fmb

After this I started APEX (I allready had a workspace and a user) and on the righthand side of the screen there is a new option: Application Migration



After clicking this I had to create a new project and after that I had to import the previously created darwin_fmb.xml file:


After pressing [next], I get a summary of the imported XML file:



The original form consist of 1 block, 1 base table block (this is nice, the converter is able to dsitinguish beteen base table and non base table blocks!) and three items. In this form are no triggers, no list of values, no alerts and no program units. In this simple case I'm not interested in the last objects but I have to admit that I'm curious what will happen with these objects.

I have the option to upload another XML file but I choose for creating the application.

This results in the following steps:

[Next]

[Next] Note: By default Apex creates a Report followed by a Table layout


A tabular Form


With the first theme.



And after a while there is the application.
When I run it I see that the application is migrated very smoothly. This looks very promising for more complex forms!

Yesterday I did a session for the developers of the project I'm currently working for.
It was about the introduction of a multilingual version of their application and the consequences of this version for their work.

The application is an Oracle Forms 10gR2 application with about 800 forms. About half of the forms are 100% generated from Oracle Designer.
The other half of the forms are hand-build in earlier versions of Oracle Forms (starting with Oracle Forms 4.5) and migrated several times.

The datamodel used for the multilingual enabling is relative straight forward. The first table is a table that contains all modules in the application.
A detail table from this table contains all user-interface items from a certain type that are in this module. For instance windows,text items, tabpages, checkboxes etc. etc. (all objects in a form). The last table is a detail table from the user-interface-items table that contains the actual translations of the items. Columns in this last table are for instance language and text_item_type (the user interface item [text item] has a prompt an a hint text).

In the pre-form trigger of all modules a call is made to a central program unit (the application is generated/build using headstart) where the contents of the tables are read for that specific module and the actual translation is started. All items are translated using the standard built-ins like set_item_property.

Main problem of this project is the way the metadata tables are populated. You could write logic that extracts this information from Oracle Designer. However, half of the forms is not generated so this approach does not work.

We decided to use a third-party tool. It is called the FormsApi Master (http://www.orcl-toolbox.com/fapimaster.asp).
This tool uses the Oracle Forms Open Application Interface to programmatically query, modify and create FMB/MMB/PLL/OLB modules. The tool uses a scripting language (similar to PL/SQL) that gives you full access & flexibility over the Oracle FormsAPI. We created a script that extracts all the information form the Oracle Forms modules and puts this information in a script. The scripts are used to populate the metadata tables.

Another problem that we were facing were the occurences of boilerplate text. Unfortunately there is no built-in like set_boilerplate_text. Therefore all boilerplate text has to be removed from the forms and replaced by alternatives. The older forms contained for instance items with boilerplate prompts (In forms 4.5 this was not a property from an item). So all occurences of this prompts have to be transfered tot the actual item. A boring and error prone job. Fortunately the FormsApi Master helps again. In the scripts corner of http://www.orcl-toolbox.com/fapimaster.asp I found a demo script that automates this job.

The information extracted from a fmb is not the only information that has to be translated. Almost every application uses referential data that is not maintainable by end-users. You can think of error messages, domain-information, module information etc.
I will post on this subject on a later moment