Oracle has fine-tuned his own roadmap for the further development of their Application Development Tools.
First of all, all existing Oracle Forms customers don’t need to worry about the support offered by Oracle. That is, if they already migrated their applications towards the latest versions. Oracle Forms and Reports 11gR2 currently have Premier support until October 2016 and have Extended support until October 2017, providing a more than sufficient window to take appropriate actions.
Support for older versions than 11gR1 is discontinued, and this is something that the majority of the installed Oracle Forms community isn’t taking into account.
So what are the options Oracle suggests when you want to keep using their tools?
Oracle Forms
“Oracle has no plan to discontinue support of Oracle Forms. Furthermore, a new version of Forms, Oracle Forms 12c, is planned for delivery as a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c.”
This statement ensures that Oracle Forms is still not listed as an ‘End-of-Life’ product, but will continue to play an important part in the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack.
First of all, all existing Oracle Forms customers don’t need to worry about the support offered by Oracle. That is, if they already migrated their applications towards the latest versions. Oracle Forms and Reports 11gR2 currently have Premier support until October 2016 and have Extended support until October 2017, providing a more than sufficient window to take appropriate actions.
Support for older versions than 11gR1 is discontinued, and this is something that the majority of the installed Oracle Forms community isn’t taking into account.
So what are the options Oracle suggests when you want to keep using their tools?
Oracle Forms
“Oracle has no plan to discontinue support of Oracle Forms. Furthermore, a new version of Forms, Oracle Forms 12c, is planned for delivery as a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c.”
This statement ensures that Oracle Forms is still not listed as an ‘End-of-Life’ product, but will continue to play an important part in the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack.
Oracle Reports
“The last major changes to Oracle Reports were in the 10g release. Since then, there have been limited new features added to the product in Oracle Reports 11gR1 and 11gR2. Development efforts for Oracle Reports since 10g have been focused on stability and bug fixes. We are planning to release Oracle Reports 12c as part of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c.”
Basically this means that Oracle will not further enhance the features of Reports. What does this mean for your Oracle Reports? Well, it means that Oracle has chosen the path of Oracle BI Publisher as being the reporting engine of choice and they will only look at Oracle Reports as a product that will need support on the past developments.
You can continue using Oracle Reports and you will also receive support on it, but Oracle strongly advises to take a look at Oracle BI Publisher and even start migration towards it.
Oracle Designer
“Oracle Designer 10g was the last version of this product, released as a component of Oracle Developer Suite 10g. Oracle Designer was not released as a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, nor is it planned to be a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c. Oracle Support continues to offer sustaining level support for Oracle Designer 10g.”
So Oracle Designer will remain an end-of-life product with no further enhancements to be expected in the coming years.
Looking at the offered functionalities of Oracle Designer, the 2 main features (forms generation and modeling) should be looked at differently.
When Oracle Designer is mainly used as forms generator, we advise to keep your past investments in Oracle Designer and continue working as before.
If Oracle Designer is mainly used as modeling tool, than you should take a look at Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. This product can be used license fee free, but offers full support by Oracle, and will be further developed in the coming years.
What does Oracle suggest when you want to move away from Oracle and Reports?
Concerning Oracle Reports and Oracle Designer the message is clear and already stated in this document.
But what about Oracle Forms?
Well Oracle has also changed it’s view on ‘Forms modernization’.
Off course they first suggest to migrate to the latest available version to maintain optimal support. But when you are looking to extend your Oracle Forms, there are 2 options.
Use Oracle ADF when your applications have following characteristics:
• Extensive business rules or UI control logic in the application itself
• Need integration with and access to Fusion Applications or other 3rd party applications
• Need access to features provided by Oracle Fusion Middleware, such as BPM, BIP, WebCenter, and SOA
• For larger scale deployments where most of the processing time is in the application, and scalability is achieved by adding multiple middle tiers
• Larger development teams with requirements for complete development lifecycle support
• General preference to use Java/JEE technology
And use Oracle Application Express (APEX) when:
• Most of the application logic is database resident PL/SQL
• For larger scale deployments, most of the processing time is in the database, and scalability is achieved by scaling up the database server
• Small development team with modest development lifecycle support requirements
• You do not have the skills or do not want to learn Java
Full details of the Statement of Direction can be found here:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/issue-archive/2010/toolssod-3-129969.pdf .
Further questions?
This general outline might not completely reflect your current situation.
Within Contribute, an Oracle Platinum Partner, we have daily experience to support and guide you within the following domains:
• Forms development / upgrades / modernization
• Forms migrations to ADF / Java / APEX
• ADF development
• APEX Development
• Setting up Java & Forms middleware infrastructure
“The last major changes to Oracle Reports were in the 10g release. Since then, there have been limited new features added to the product in Oracle Reports 11gR1 and 11gR2. Development efforts for Oracle Reports since 10g have been focused on stability and bug fixes. We are planning to release Oracle Reports 12c as part of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c.”
Basically this means that Oracle will not further enhance the features of Reports. What does this mean for your Oracle Reports? Well, it means that Oracle has chosen the path of Oracle BI Publisher as being the reporting engine of choice and they will only look at Oracle Reports as a product that will need support on the past developments.
You can continue using Oracle Reports and you will also receive support on it, but Oracle strongly advises to take a look at Oracle BI Publisher and even start migration towards it.
Oracle Designer
“Oracle Designer 10g was the last version of this product, released as a component of Oracle Developer Suite 10g. Oracle Designer was not released as a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, nor is it planned to be a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c. Oracle Support continues to offer sustaining level support for Oracle Designer 10g.”
So Oracle Designer will remain an end-of-life product with no further enhancements to be expected in the coming years.
Looking at the offered functionalities of Oracle Designer, the 2 main features (forms generation and modeling) should be looked at differently.
When Oracle Designer is mainly used as forms generator, we advise to keep your past investments in Oracle Designer and continue working as before.
If Oracle Designer is mainly used as modeling tool, than you should take a look at Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. This product can be used license fee free, but offers full support by Oracle, and will be further developed in the coming years.
What does Oracle suggest when you want to move away from Oracle and Reports?
Concerning Oracle Reports and Oracle Designer the message is clear and already stated in this document.
But what about Oracle Forms?
Well Oracle has also changed it’s view on ‘Forms modernization’.
Off course they first suggest to migrate to the latest available version to maintain optimal support. But when you are looking to extend your Oracle Forms, there are 2 options.
Use Oracle ADF when your applications have following characteristics:
• Extensive business rules or UI control logic in the application itself
• Need integration with and access to Fusion Applications or other 3rd party applications
• Need access to features provided by Oracle Fusion Middleware, such as BPM, BIP, WebCenter, and SOA
• For larger scale deployments where most of the processing time is in the application, and scalability is achieved by adding multiple middle tiers
• Larger development teams with requirements for complete development lifecycle support
• General preference to use Java/JEE technology
And use Oracle Application Express (APEX) when:
• Most of the application logic is database resident PL/SQL
• For larger scale deployments, most of the processing time is in the database, and scalability is achieved by scaling up the database server
• Small development team with modest development lifecycle support requirements
• You do not have the skills or do not want to learn Java
Full details of the Statement of Direction can be found here:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/issue-archive/2010/toolssod-3-129969.pdf .
Further questions?
This general outline might not completely reflect your current situation.
Within Contribute, an Oracle Platinum Partner, we have daily experience to support and guide you within the following domains:
• Forms development / upgrades / modernization
• Forms migrations to ADF / Java / APEX
• ADF development
• APEX Development
• Setting up Java & Forms middleware infrastructure
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