On Oracle's statement of direction for Forms & Reports

For anyone that may have missed it, Oracle announced their current statement of direction for Oracle Application Development Tools - Statement of Direction: Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports and Oracle Designer

Statements of direction (SOD) can be fascinating reads, here is the current one for Oracle Application Express, and my thoughts on the 4.2 & 4.1 documents.

As a former (and sometimes current) Forms developer, I read this one with interest as it pertains to the pending 12c offering from Oracle.

The product strategy still oozes SOA and Fusion Middleware, but I found some interesting snippets:

Oracle has no plan to discontinue support of Oracle Forms

Which is great - as mentioned a few paragraphs earlier:

Oracle recognizes this considerable investment and remains committed to the long-term support of these product. 

It's as ubiquitous as Cobol, which fed a few jokes in the twitter world.  While there is no rush to move forward with your Forms applications, you might be up for more pain the longer you leave a plan to move on. I've worked in environments where Cobol is still around, and while the paradigm difference is a little more vast, it can make for massive migration projects.

Oracle’s strategic reporting solution is now BI Publisher

That's a shame in a way, perhaps I'm being nostalgic, but Oracle Reports was an awesome product. Reporting solutions still seem to remain a massive question mark for some sites, at least indecision on the best solution for the relevant environment. The cost seems to scare many away from using BI publisher, I guess especially when you compare the free Application Express product side-by-side. For comparison, I wouldn't like to estimate how much investment the infrastructure is for Oracle Reports, but it might be a middle-term solution for some as they migrate the application base away from Forms to ADF or Apex.

Protect the investment you have in your existing technology by upgrading to the latest release

Please do, I've been working in multiple sites still on 3.x and it's frustrating. Not only for the developer, but for what we can efficiently provide to make the application UI friendly. The same goes for your database, and of course with your Forms environment. There haven't been too many new features since Forms 6i, however advancements have been made to support newer hardware, operating systems and interfacing back to the database.

Oracle Designer 10g was the last version of this product

Move on people. I was never a big designer user - I had the pleasure of using Headstart once, but the universe has evolved. Among other options, there is SQL Developer Data Modeler.

On Oracle's recommendations for migrating from Forms and Reports, they first place your environment in context.

If you need to integrate with Fusion Applications; have extensive business rules & UI logic within the application; general preferences to Java/JEE (among others) => then move to Oracle JDeveloper with ADF.

If most of your application logic is within PL/SQL; most of the processing is within the database, and you don't favour Java => then move to Oracle Application Express.

(On a side note, Chris Muir has a good post answering the question on how much Java is needed for ADF)

It seems the two common, major factors in this decision are
1) The scale of your project and size of your team
2) Your infrastructure & processing requirements

I'm not sure I'm really convinced on the first point. I've never been involved in a JDeveloper project, however I have been in a few small & large Forms projects. I think it really depends on the application you need to build and the team you have.

For me, the most important factor is the infrastructure you currently have, and where you want to go with that. Commenting any further is tough because most of my concentration goes into development. I do listen to what those in the know have to say, though - and it seems to be key to their decision making.

Second to that, though, understanding of the capability of both products is essential. A recent discussion with someone that had little knowledge of Apex (and they are still on 3.1) had them well inside the JDeveloper fence, likening the capability of "dinky" Apex to something like MS Access.

I'm not about to defend Apex as a product, and say it's the only destination out there for migrating away from Forms - but choose the right tool for your job at hand. Chris' blog title hits the nail on the head - one size does not fit all.

Arm yourself with the right information before deciding how/where/when to move away from Forms.  Talk with people that have been involved in both types of projects; talk with experts in the relevant areas; find out the capabilities of each product; consider the infrastructure you have & the status of your databases; & consider the team of developers you already have.

And most importantly, don't forget your users. At the end of the day, they're the ones that need to use what you build, and the workflow of the application needs to suit them. Web pages can get pretty clever these days, but your are still constrained to that browser environment. Do you they need more than what a browser can provide?

Finally, take anything your local Oracle sales rep has to save with a few grains of salt ;-) I'll re-iterate a previous point - talk with the experts, the grunts in the field who are familiar with the capabilities of each product and then re-think about the big picture.

That's my 5 cents.

First events of 2012

Today is the true new year for many, and Sage Computing Services would like to announce it's first training event for the year open for enrolment.

JDeveloper Workshop
27th February to 2nd March
Perth CBD
Taught by Oracle Ace & Educator of the year - Penny Cookson
Workshop details

If you can't make that, keep the morning of the 29th Feb free. If things haven't changed on me over the new year, AUSOUG will be sending out details of a breakfast at the West Perth Oracle building by one of our favourites - Connor McDonald.

If you're interested in any of our courses, feel free to drop us a line and we can schedule a time frame that suits you.

Scott

Oracle Training Australia (plug)

As it so happens, June is going to be a busy month training for us in Perth, Australia.

For 5 days from the 13th June, ACE Director Chris Muir will be conducting a JDeveloper Workshop in Perth. If you're an Oracle Forms developer who wants to migrate your skill set to the 21st century, this is your course.

Alternatively, you can immerse yourself in the world of Oracle Application Express. From 15th June for 3 days, I will take you on an Application Express workshop - no experience necessary.

To supplement that, we are also holding an Advanced Application Express & New Features workshop for Apex 4.0 on the 28-30th June 2011 in West Perth.

Feel free to contact that Sage team for more information.

If you're somewhere in Australia other than Perth, and you can't make it across in June - arrange a time where we can travel to you to train your team. SQL, JDeveloper, Apex, Forms, DB Tuning... name your poison. We have competitive rates, extensive training notes, and I'll almost guarantee you'll have a good time.

Otherwise, we hope to see you at the next Oracle event.

Scott

Of course the Australian Oracle Community is alive

It's just sometimes not everyone hear's about it.

Last Monday I was at the South Australian AUSOUG Conference in Adelaide. This was my first real visit to Adelaide and I was also keen to greet those I've met at previous conferences around Australia, and meet those I haven't had opportunity to see.

The day ended up being quite interesting and fulfilling. SA President Vito Rinaldi mentioned they ended up with around 80 delegates, which he said wasn't bad for this particular event.

As usual, I wasn't overly enthused for the keynote address by Roland Slee, but he had some interesting things to add regarding Oracle in Australia. One interesting point I happened to note down was the notion "economies of scale." It's been a major driving factor of our civilisation for well over one hundred years, but it still doesn't really apply to software development. He took this notion to spruik the power of Oracle Exadata - I was suitably impressed.

I made another great note while in that seminar - an idea for a basic Apex application - don't they come at the strangest times?!

I then had to bust out my first presentation - on Apex Performance. I got some good feedback which was a good offset to the guy I saw at the back of the room nodding off straight after the coffee break. One particular fellow said it was great jot down so many little thoughts on how to generally improve their applications which were basically borne from a self-taught environment.

Next on the agenda was a case study on Agile development by Kevin Wohling. I learned a lot from this one and I thought his analogy of building a house was apt -would you define where to hammer every nail up front? Simply don't over engineer your solutions.
Some good practices were mentioned that I think are regardless of the life-cycle approach - constant communication with users & shield your development team from distractions.

After lunch Guy Harrison's talk on High Performance PL/SQL was his usual high quality. I think info-graphics are great, and his food pyramid for PL/SQL was on the money. From data type usage up the top, down through code structure, data handling and the all important SQL. Again, I noted down another idea - a feature request for the PL/SQL development team regarding bulk binding.

I almost went to Avi Miller's Virtualization and Cloud Computing seminar, but I thought it may have been a little beyond what I was after so I attended Connor's 11g Features for Developers instead. I've seen a variation before, but I'm glad I went as I picked up a few features that I had to note down for looking into further later. I sure wasn't going to soak it all up at the glorious pace that he runs! The most impressive I thought was the ability to manage Editions using TNS services - very cool.
I also noted what he mentioned regarding bulk operations so I didn't repeat the information in my second session.

So my second session was on Bulk Binds, a revision of a presentation I did a few years ago in a WA branch meeting. It was good to leverage what Guy & Connor already glossed over in their presentations and allow the delegates to see a deeper view of what can be done and what should be considered.
The pace was fast, and I'm really thinking the 45 minute timeslots we have here in Australia simply isn't sufficient, particularly when we invite international guests to deliver their 1 hour sessions.

Speaking of international guests, I attended Craig Shallahamer's second session on Evaluating Alternative Performance Solutions. I thought it may have a little outside my league - I was right. I've been happy with the level of mathematics I've seen since high school, and that was a bit much for an afternoon! However he made up for it with his zeal. It was entertaining, and it was a pleasure to catch up with him for drinks afterwards, and ultimately share interesting dinner conversations with him & Tony Scholefield at the Richmond.

Craig has already submitted abstracts for Australia's next event - Insync11 at the Sydney Convention Centre, August 2011. I will be submitting some of my own, so I hope to meet him again in a few months.

Back home in Perth, Sage Computing have some news of our own. We were recently mentioned in an Oracle Customer Snapshot for our work at Department of Treasury and Finance. I can't take any credit for this particular project, but well done Penny, Ray, Eddie & Chris. They all bring aboard specific talents and it sounds like a engaging project - converting a large Oracle Forms application to JDeveloper.

Speaking of, this will be my final segue in this post - Sage have set dates for our next JDeveloper Workshop here in Perth - 13-17th of June 2011 - run by Ace Director Chris Muir.
We will also be scheduling an Apex4.0 course in May or June, which will be an advanced look at Apex4 with special attention to new features - more to come soon.

Phew - I'm glad I'm off to Bali tonight ;-)

Advert: SAGE Computing Services Training - 2011

This April SAGE Computing Services are holding a training event that may interest beginners, business users, testers & developers alike.

April 18th-21st 2011 - Oracle SQL 10/11g Workshop - Perth
The course is designed to provide the student with a basis for developing systems using the Oracle database. The SQL language is covered from simple to complex constructs. Guidelines are provided on writing SQL for optimum performance and ease of maintenance.

Stay tuned as we are also looking to schedule a JDeveloper Workshop in the next few months, and are happy to hear about any requests for Application Express 3.x or 4.0 training.

We also arrange on-site training on-demand around Australia.

Hit up our website for further training enquiries and follow through to the contact us details page. We look forward to hearing from you soon.