August 30, 2011

Result of the 2011 Oracle Forms poll - part 9

Summary

When I take a look at the poll results, I recognize as a major concern for many users, the fear of an uncertain future. Oracle should give a clear commitment to Forms and combat this insecurity so active.

There is a big risk that the majority of those who went away from Oracle Forms and go to .NET. That was not aware before my survey and is one of the biggest surprises for me in this poll. This product-change will have far-reaching consequences. Anyone who has tried .NET, perhaps thinks in a second step, that Microsoft SQL Server might be a good alternative to the Oracle database. In this way, Oracle not only loses its loyal customers in the forms front-end, but also in the core business.

I conclude this article with the knowledge that we must have no fear in the next 10-15 years with our good old Oracle Forms! I look forward to 2012 to participate in the beta testing of Forms 12, if Oracle starts a new big betatest campground in Redwood Shores as in 2007.


Just use Forms
Gerd



Here starts the poll

Back to part 8 of the article

August 29, 2011

Result of the 2011 Oracle Forms poll - part 8

What will the future bring?

What is the roadmap of Oracle Forms? All features that are mentioned below, are subject to Oracle's safe harbour statement


In other words, we may look forward to most features with reasonable certainty. If one of them now should not be installed, it will (hopefully) in the next version.

New Features Forms 11g Release 2:
- Integration of the forms runtime in Oracle Access Management - an alternative Single Sign On
- Easier and better installation of Forms 11g on the Web Logic Server

New Features Forms 12:
- Oracle Real-User-Experience-Integration for better testing environment
- Enhancements in the Forms Builder
- Better integration in the Oracle Enterprise Manager
- Better support of new OS versions (32+64 bit)


To be continued with the summary

Back to part 7 of the article

August 26, 2011

Result of the 2011 Oracle Forms poll - part 7

Question 6: Which new Features did you wish for Forms 12?

Most named topics were:

- reintroduction Client/Server
- integration of a modern pl/sql editor
-- with auto-suggest, formatter and code completion
-- enhanced syntax highlighting
- integration of pl/sql-refactoring
- easier installation
- forms-blocks build on data grids
-- access to all records at the same time
-- switching columns
-- increase and decrease column width
- better integration of reports and java beans
- creating objects at runtime
- drag and drop
- zooming formlayout


To be continued with What will the future bring?

Back to part 6 of the article

August 25, 2011

Result of the 2011 Oracle Forms poll - part 6

Question 5: What did you think about the future of Oracle Forms?

That was not a question with an easy Yes or No. But 70% of all answers gave positive feedback.

Some answers were extreme positive or negative: For example: "More stable that all java-frameworks", "Forms Web is bad, as Client/Server full of grandeur", "There are no clever alternatives" or "Forms will die, whatever we do in the next 5, 10 or 20 years".

In most answers they repeated the appeal to Oracle, to develop Forms further: "It must be more done for Forms! Then we have a future", "Forms is our most important development-tool for dialog-programs and we hope, that Oracle will maintain it for a long time".

In many cases they said, that Oracle Forms is the most productive development environment for Oracle Databases: "In our opinion we think, that there is no other product, were you can develop in comparable time such a good output"


To be continued with Question 6: Which new Features did you wish for Forms 12?

Back to part 5 of the article

August 24, 2011

Result of the 2011 Oracle Forms poll - part 5

Question 4: Are you thinking about a replacement?


One-third of all forms-applications will be replaced with Java, ADF and .NET.

Very interesting: 40% of all customers, who leave Forms, went to Microssofts .NET. Oracle's ADF is only on rank 3.


To be continued with Question 5: What did you think about the future of Oracle Forms?

Back to part 4 of the article

August 23, 2011

Result of the 2011 Oracle Forms poll - part 4

Question 3: Are you thinking about a migration?


More than two-thirds of all forms-applications will be migrated to Forms 10g or 11g in the next years.

That's good news. It means, that all those unsupported old forms-versions went to a modern three tier architecture.

But what about the 20 percent of the applications, which are still running under Forms 6i Client/Server? Maybe the next question is the answer:


To be continued with Question 4: Are you thinking about a replacement?

Back to part 3 of the article

August 22, 2011

Result of the 2011 Oracle Forms poll - part 3

Question 2: Since how many years did you work with Forms?


Some answers like "I work with Forms since 2.3" are matched to "24 years" :-)

The average of all forms-developers work sind 15 years with the toolset. That is an amazing amount of time.


To be continued with Question 3: Are you thinking about a migration?

Back to part 2 of the article

August 19, 2011

Result of the 2011 Oracle Forms poll - part 2

Question 1: With which forms-version did you work today?


Nearly 40% of all customers are working with the good old Forms 6i Client/Server. They love their Client/Server and don't want to go to the expensive web-servers of Forms 10g and 11g.

Less than 10% are working with the new Weblogic Server and Forms 11g. That's quite few. I hope I get more infos about that topic, when I start the next poll in 2012.


To be continued with Question 2: Since how many years did you work with Forms?

Back to part 1 of the article

August 17, 2011

Result of the 2011 Oracle Forms poll - part 1

I realized the last months, that it is not that easy to find some hours in one piece to write down my results of the Oracle Forms poll.


So I decided to split it into parts and here is the first one:

Why did I start the Oracle Forms poll ?

Ten years ago I heard the first rumors about "Forms is dead and modern software engineers should use Java". It was the time of Forms 6i Client/Server and Forms 6i Web on the Internet Application Servers.

Some years later we got Forms 9i with a lot of new features and 2006 came Forms 10g, which was the stablest version based on OC4J in the Oracle Application Server. But the rumors didn't end.

Oracle launched in 2007 a huge 5-day-betatest in Redwood Shores. I got an invitation and had a close look at the newest versions of all products including the new Oracle Forms 11g. That was amazing!

The new Forms 11g worked so stable in the betatest, that I thought, the production version cannot be far away. One year later Oracle purchased BEA. The new Weblogic Application Server was now strategic and all products had to run on it. This was the reason, why Oracle Forms needed two more years to get ready.

In those years, Oracle was pushing Java and ADF as the best way for developing applications.

That was the point, to hear, how the mood of the forms-developer and forms-projects today is. I started a poll and invited nearly 1000 customers to help me and find out, what they think about the future of Oracle Forms.


To be continued with Question 1: With which forms-version did you work today?