OraTransplant

Flash movie showing Oracle Forms and JSF integration

22 January 2007 at 21:21 CET | In Forms, Oracle, Web components |

Last Saturday I blogged about my abstract being selected for presentation at the ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2007. Today I made a short Flash movie with a rough demo version of the way I will integrate Oracle Forms with a JSF, JSP or any other web application. This viewlet shows the JSF web application passing context and events into Forms and Forms passing context and events to the web page. All these interfaces rely on a JavaScript interface in and out of Forms.

There are a whole lot of details that still need to be sorted out over the next few weeks.

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

24 Comments

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Very impressive. I cannot imagine how you can talk to the form with Javascript !
I’m waiting for your presentation.
Francois

Comment by Francois — 23 January 2007 #
Francois, will you be visiting ODTUG 2007? If so, I know I will at least have one attendant for my presentation

Comment by wilfred — 23 January 2007 #
Really, really impressive! That seems the way to preserve all existing forms and integrate it with the newer technologly. Can hardly wait to learn more about this kind of integration.
Keep up the good work!
Roel

Comment by Roel — 23 January 2007 #
No Wilfred, I will not come to this event, but I’m sure you will prepare a nice copy of your presentation ;o)
And don’t worry about the amount of visitors at your presentation, Forms developers are tens of thousands !
Francois

Comment by Francois — 23 January 2007 #
No Wilfred, I will not come to this event, but I’m sure you are going to prepare a nice paper.
Francois

Comment by Francois — 23 January 2007 #
Great work! We’re new on the JSF - ADF World but have tons of work on Oracle Forms and one day we’re gonna have to start creating new apps that require this sort of interaction. Unfortunately we don’t have the chance to attend such an interesting presentation. Will the paper be available to download on the web?

Comment by Aníbal — 23 January 2007 #
Yes, the paper will be published on my blog eventually. I will also try to include a full working example you can run on your own system.

Comment by wilfred — 23 January 2007 #
Very impressive integration of JavaScript into Forms!!!

Comment by Patrick Wolf — 23 January 2007 #
Thanks for the movie.

This sure looks like “seamless integration” at runtime. Is it also “seamless” to implement this kind of integration?

regards, Jan Vervecken

Comment by Jan Vervecken — 27 January 2007 #
Jan,

It doesn’t even involve that much Java and JavaScript code. You just have to know where to put it. I’m writing the paper right now and will publish it here on my blog once it is finished. It will have all the details necessary to do this at your own site and customize the solution.

Comment by wilfred — 28 January 2007 #
Very impressive, just the solution we were looking for.
Is there a way to make Forms 6i communicate with JSF?

Comment by Amy — 31 January 2007 #
Amy,

I haven’t tested this myself, but I see no reason why the techniques used would not work with Forms 6i. I plan on testing the solution with both Oracle JInitiator and Sun JVM againast Forms 10gR2. Once the paper is out, feel free to conduct your own tests with Forms 6i.

Comment by wilfred — 1 February 2007 #
Dear Wilfred,

thanks for the very impressive demonstration. This is the kind of integration i am looking for. It was very disappointing for me, that i could not participate in ODTUG 2006, but in 2007 anybody interested in Forms should see your presentation.
But where to get Forms 11g? Is it possible to get a beta version these days? I am working on a new book about Oracle Forms and would be very happy to cover the features of 11g.

Regards Perry

Comment by Perry — 1 February 2007 #
Perry,

Thanks for the nice words. I do not have access to Forms 11g. I’m a member of the Development Tools Customer Advisory Board. Oracle Product Management organized a webcast last June explaining their plans for Forms 11g.

Even before that webcast I already discussed the possibilities of a JavaScript API with a number of people. I just made sure that my current implementation in 10gR2 is as close as possible to the forthcoming implementation in 11g. This should make it easy to upgrade to 11g once it is there.

Oracle does have a beta program you can enroll for, but I have no idea what your changes are of getting accepted.

So, I have at least one attended for the ODTUG presentation

Comment by wilfred — 2 February 2007 #
Dear Wilfred,

hopefully i can join. In the last project the customer did not allow me to leave the project for one week, so i think i still have a free ticket.
What is really impressing me is, that you use Forms like a component in your demo. Normally Forms is a full page application with interfering things like applet frame, console window etc.
I think you generate the embedded applet tag in your JSF page.

regards Perry

Comment by Perry — 2 February 2007 #
Perry, I love the quote “use Forms like a component”. That’s a great summary of what I am doing. Why didn’t I think of that?

I’ll use that in the paper I’m writing about this subject. Currently I still “hardcode” the necessary (X)HTML in the webpage, but I might make it into a proper JSF component if I have the time.

Comment by wilfred — 2 February 2007 #
Wilfred,

i gladly accept to give you some words.
By the way, do you like to read some german books?
regards Perry

Comment by Perry — 3 February 2007 #
Perry,

I did have one year of German at school when I was 12. I ended the year with a score of 3 out of 10, so my German is really bad. Germany is one of the countries participating in Eurotransplant, so we do have a lot of contacts in Germany. I always try to find the ones that speak English

So no, I cannot read German books.

Comment by wilfred — 3 February 2007 #
Wilfred,

it´s a pity that cannot read german books, so you won´t be able to read my book about Forms.
I´m just looking for experienced people, who are able to give me some feedback.

regards Perry

Comment by Perry — 5 February 2007 #
A creative and impressive piece of work.

However it leaves me with the question: what kind of architecture are we getting involved in with this kind of hybrid Forms-J2EE application? It solves the issue of modernizing Forms legacy. But at what costs? The complexity of the code is increasing sky high. JavaScript, applets, Forms client side PLSQL libraries, server side PLSQL packages, more PLSQL packages called by something like BC4J, Java code in backing beans or other Service layer beans, all kinds of XML configuration files, HTML, CSS. Wow, that’s a lot different places were code is residing. How about the dependencies between all these parts? If an organization desides to migrate its old Forms into a construction like this, how much time will cost in subsequent years (during the life time of the application) to perform maintainance. How testable are modifiactions? I think the maintainability is suboptimal, and that is going to cost a lot of money in the future. I am wondering if it wouldn’t better to get rid of the Forms all the way. That costs money too, but will end up in a much healtier application later on. Once your Forms are integrated seamless, they will never go away anymore, because the manager is going to ask: what added value will that have? So you will find yourself end up with a complex and unmaintainable mountain of code. I feel sorry for the developers that will face the mess.

Comment by Erik Kerkhoven — 17 May 2007 #
Erik,

I understand your initial reaction about the architecture becoming complex and hard (costly) to maintain. But if you take a closer look at the actual solution and read through the Step-By-Step guide you’ll notice that there isn’t a whole lot of coding or magic involved. It’s some very limited coding in PL/SQL and some basic Java coding (extending the applet and creating a JavaBean).

You’re right that the end solution uses a lot of technologies, but these are all technologies that are inherent to the use of Oracle Forms and/or Oracle ADF. There are no new technologies introduced by this concept. The large number of techniques can be daunting for an Oracle Forms developer making the switch to Java, but that’s a whole different discussion and not related to this particular integration solution.

The maintenance costs for the integration itself are very limited since the integration requires very little coding. On the other hand you have a point that maintaining both Oracle Forms and Oracle ADF is more costly that maintaining a single technology. Each organization will have to make their own choice: migrate Forms to ADF Faces in a big bang with a large investment but potentially lower maintenance costs or use this Forms/ADF integration and save a whole lot on the initial investment but perhaps spend more in maintenance the coming years. The “right” choice might differ per organization. We have decided not to invest heavily in replacing Forms with ADF Faces when there is no direct “user need” to do this. With this integration we can integrate Forms and ADF. This enables us to do all new developments in ADF Faces while keeping integrated with the existing Forms. Over time, the Forms will be replaced by ADF Faces when there is a business/user need to rewrite the functionality.

I love your point about Forms never going away once they are integrated with ADF Faces because a manager will never see the added value of migration. Well, if that’s the case then there probably is no need to migrate from Forms to ADF Faces. Really, if you cannot convince management of the added value of migration then there probably is no added value and you’re better of sticking to a combination of the two technologies. As stated before, we will rewrite Forms to ADF Faces when there is a user need (= new requirements) to do a major overhaul of the Form(s). All new developments will already be in ADF Faces, so over time the number of Oracle Forms will reduce. You need to keep licenses, support fees, trained employees, etc. to keep Forms running. There will probably be a point in time when all these costs of keeping Forms will be too high. At that point I should be able to convince management of investing in the final replacement of Forms with ADF Faces. But at that stage I can build a solid business case to do so. At this moment there is no way I can justify the large investment of replacing 300+ Forms with ADF Faces technology.

Comment by wilfred — 22 May 2007 #
how to bring a flash move in oracle forms

Comment by saleem iqbal — 27 June 2007 #
For embedding a web browser (including Flash) in your Oracle Form have a look at http://forms.pjc.bean.over-blog.com/article-5029633.html

Comment by wilfred — 27 June 2007 #
On the other hand you have a point that maintaining both Oracle Forms and Oracle ADF is more costly that maintaining a single technology. Each organization will have to make their own choice:

Comment by travesti — 26 August 2009 #

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