OraTransplant

I will be presenting at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2007

20 January 2007 at 15:39 CET | In Forms, Oracle, Web components |

I was thrilled to just get an email my abstract was selected for presentation at the annual ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference So I will be off to Daytona Beach, Florida for June 18-21.

Here is the abstract I submitted:

Protecting your Forms investment while moving to the web

Oracle Forms has been web enabled since version 6i and runs as a Java applet in a browser. But this still does not offer a seamless integration between your Form and a web application.

This session shows several techniques to seamlessly integrate your Forms in a HTML web application. This includes a JavaScript interface for Forms, a version 11 feature which can already be added to your existing version 10g. This enables Forms to take part in the page flow of a web application while passing context to Forms and back.

A way to eliminate Forms startup times will be shown and some UI tricks to visually integrate your Forms in a web page. Users won’t even notice they’re using Forms. The session will have an in-depth discussion and code samples of the techniques used. This enables you to implement the same technique in your organization enabling a smooth integration of Oracle Forms in HTML web applications.

Now, there is still a lot of work to be done. A lot of details for my technical solution still have to be sorted out and I have to produce a paper and slides. I’ll start working on the details in the weeks to come and will try to publish as much of it here on my weblog.

Update 22 January 2007: I have published a rough Flash movie with a quick demo of a seamless integration of a JSF web application with a traditional Oracle Form. It passes context and events from the web application into Forms and the other way around.

There is a separate page with more information on the concept of integrating Oracle Forms and Oracle ADF Faces (or any other web technology)

15 Comments

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Hi Wilfred,

Mine got accepted as well. See you over in Florida…!

cheers

Mark

Comment by Mark Rittman — 20 January 2007 #
“… a version 11 feature which can already be added to your existing version 10g…”
Where ? When ? How ?
Francois

Comment by Francois — 20 January 2007 #
Mark: looking forward to meet again.

Francois: Just a little bit of magic It does include extending the oracle.forms.engine.Main applet class. More details will follow.

Comment by wilfred — 20 January 2007 #
cool - mine too - I see you there and don’t forget your shorts

Comment by clemens — 20 January 2007 #
Thanks Wilfred.
Notice that you could, today, etablish a dialog between a Forms and a J2EE application:
http://sheikyerbouti.developpez.com/forms-pjc-bean/fusion/fusion.htm

Francois

Comment by Francois — 22 January 2007 #
Hi Wilfred,

Congratulations!
I’ll see you there, mine got accepted as well

See you on the beach,
Dimitri

Comment by Dimitri Gielis — 22 January 2007 #
Francois,

I did have a look at your very ingenious and interesting solution. However, there are a number of caveats for my situation. Our users use our Forms applications over the internet through proxies and firewalls so socket connections from the application server back to the client are difficult.

I’m trying to achieve a solution where the page flow is implemented in JSP/JSF and you can (re)use your existing Forms in this setup. This means application context (like selected customer) has to be passed back and forth between JSP/JSF and the Forms. The key is that I would like to use Forms in a JSP/JSF framework and not the other way around in which you can show webpages in a Form.

I’ve thought about a solution with an invisible applet on each web page besides the Forms applet. The Oracle Form could then contain a JavaBean that sets up a socket connection with the invisible applet at the 127.0.0.1 loopback address. The invisible applet can be accesses from JavaScript and can pass information to the bean over the socket connection which can raise a PL/SQL trigger in Forms.

In the end, I didn’t like the use of sockets as local firewall software can interfere and you can only run one application at the same time, or you have to make the port for the socket connection dynamic. This last solution requires a way for the invisible applet and the javabean to agree on the port number before opening the connection….

In the end I developed a whole other solution that’s very similar to the JavaScript API that will be part of Forms 11. Hopefully this allows developers to use the same solution with minimal changes once version 11 is available.

I’ll try to make a screencast of my current working prototype and will post it here on my blog.

Comment by wilfred — 22 January 2007 #
Wilfred,
I’m nervously waiting for your solution ;o)
All this seems to be very attractive !
Francois

Comment by Francois — 22 January 2007 #
I’ve just published a rough demo showing the Forms and JSF integration at http://oratransplant.nl/2007/01/22/flash-movie-showing-forms-and-jsf-integration/

Comment by wilfred — 22 January 2007 #
Is the applet(Jinitiator) loaded each time you call an Oracle form within a JSF application or is it loaded once during the session?

Is a form calls other forms, can that all be embedded within the webpage?

Your solution is amazing. I can’t wait to see the details. When do you plan to publish it?

Thanks.

Comment by Amy — 5 February 2007 #
Currently I develop and test with Sun’s JVM. With that Java VirtualMachine the applet is not reloaded on each and every page. You only get the performance penalty on the first page you visit that enbodies an Oracle Form.

The same solution should work with JInitiator since version 1.1.8. I just gave it a try and it doesn’t seem to work yet. So I probably have to change a few more settings or ask Oracle how this feature works in JInitiator. My goal is to make the solution work with both Sun JVM and Oracle JInitiator.

You can still call a Form from another Form. But remember that applications showing multiple forms at the same time don’t really match with this new UI concept, so I would advice not to use open_form.

My own personal preference would be to even avoid calling another Form from a Form. I would just use a JavaScript event to go back to the web application and let that application decide the next action. That could very well be calling another Form. This ensures all flow control is in the web application and allows for rebuilding one of the two Forms in JSF or other web technology without any change to the other Form.

My goals is to reuse existing Forms as components in newly build web applications. With that I’m trying to hide as much as possible that they are Forms. That’s why I’m hiding things like the menu bar and the status bar.

I’ll have to submit the paper to ODTUG at the beginning of May. You can expect the paper to be publicly available somewhere in May 2007.

Comment by wilfred — 5 February 2007 #
Amy,

I did some additional checking and unfortunately JInitiator 1.3.x will reload the applet on every page. This is a major setback for using this concept. JInitiator 1.1.x featured a setting called jinit_appletcache to keep the applet alive even when not viewing it on the current page.

Somehow this feature was dropped in JInitiator 1.3.x. It did appear in Sun JVM 1.4.x and later versions.

So, you have a number of options:
1) Use JInitiator 1.1.x with this new concept. This does mean you’re tied to Forms version 6i.
2) Use Sun JVM 1.4.x and you’re supported for Forms 6i, 9i, 10gR1 and 10gR2
3) Use JInititator 1.3.x with any Forms version but loose the benefit of reusing the old applet and take the penalty of applet startup on every page that includes a Form.

I’ll make sure to mention these restrictions in the forthcoming paper.

Comment by wilfred — 6 February 2007 #
Nice blog

Comment by ned — 16 June 2007 #
Thank you for your very interesting blog
Very useful blog
http://www.youtube-youtube-youtube.com

Comment by max johnson — 6 November 2008 #
Thank you for your very interesting blog
Very useful blog
http://www.cosmosbis.com

Comment by max johnson — 26 November 2008 #

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