As a development shop that based its flagship applications on Oracle Forms, we have been aware of the need to plan for next generations of our products.  The Forms technology stack has been a very stable platform for us, delivering sound functionality through its entire lifecycle - text based, thick client, client server.  While the user base of Oracle Forms remains large, it is apparent that Oracle is searching for the right mix of technologies to usher in their next generation of products.  This has opened the door for us to evaluate our CPS Portal and Web Developer as the foundation for the next generation of our own apps.

Arrival of CPS Portal and Web Developer - Over the last several years, we have responded to client demands for more nimble, web based (both internet and intranet) solutions running along side of our Forms applications.  We have done this by developing portal capabilities based on state-of-the-art web technologies, and utilizing our own expertise in application development.  We have leveraged this technology stack to rapidly develop and deploy custom solutions for our clients, providing an unprecedented level of functionality across their organizations.

Taking aim at migration - Having been a longtime Oracle shop, we have a considerable investment in the application logic found in both the form program blocks as well as in stored procedures.  We also had application configurations stored in the database and data models from the Forms that would be important to reuse.  It was crucial for us to leverage the investment we had in the Forms technology while establishing a robust user experience, so we set about establishing patterns for re-using these pieces within our Web Developer environment.

Today, we have ushered in the next generation of our CPS application.  The migration process went much more rapidly than we had anticipated, due largely to the success of leveraging the existing pieces, and a methodology that balanced a “new look and feel” with “familiar functionality”.  There are other important gains as well.  The CPS Portal gives our clients the ability to step off of proprietary application servers, reducing the costs of operating the environment, while integrating more seamlessly across the enterprise.

If you have applications written in Oracle Forms and you are considering future directions, we invite you to discuss the steps we took to migrate our applications to CPS Portal and Web Developer.