Oracle Forms Modernization – The Future of Oracle Forms is …. Forms !

This was a great week!

For the past 5 years, almost on a daily basis, I have had to explain to my Oracle Forms customers that Oracle Forms is not really dead just “Mature” and Oracle intends to keep it around for a long time. All the while quietly praying that Oracle doesn’t make a liar out of me in 2 years. Although the official message from Oracle was forms is not dead the word on the street seemed to be that Oracle Forms Modernization was a code word for migration to java. Even as new versions of Forms were released I heard more about the options for migrating Oracle Forms to APEX, ADF or Java.
Although the future of Oracle Forms seemed uncertain at best, for years I have been helping my clients secure their huge investments in Oracle Forms by stretching their legacy forms applications to the limit.

I have done projects such as modernize the look and feel of applications (see screen shots), adding webservice capabilities, integrating Oracle Forms into an IBM unified desktop application including forms automation, adding java beans / PJC’s and integrating with SOA applications.
This week, finally and officially, Oracle has joined me in embracing the best message of all “The future of forms is ….. forms” in Lucas Jellema and Grant Ronald’s presentation for UKOUG presentation. I was thrilled to see Oracle was presenting the same message I have been preaching for years. 🙂 Leave your forms systems as they are and integrate them with newer systems developed in any web-based technology.
Don’t get me wrong, I encourage all Oracle Forms users to get familiar with ADF and the next-generation tools that Oracle are offering. Oracle is offering incredibly productive java development environments and object-oriented programming is the way of the future.

However, your first project in these technologies should not be to convert a legacy system that was developed 10 – 12 years ago by 20 developers who no longer work for you and of course left no documentation. And by the way, your company’s developers have no prior java or object-oriented programming experience but you saw a demo at Oracle Open World and it looked so easy your sure you can re-develop your 700 forms application in a giffy.
A huge thanks to Grant Ronald who has kept the faith, and documentation, for us, Forms evangelists all these years! To get everyone started on the true Oracle Forms Modernization projects you can refer to some links below.
Let me know if you know of other good ones..