While CMiC considered completely rewriting its Forms-based application, it determined that the application was just too big. It was more effective and just as efficient to simply add the new functionality through Oracle JDeveloper and J2EE.

"The collaboration applications are pure JavaServer Pages [JSP] and HTML that enable us to extend our Forms-based ERP package out to all the different stakeholders, such as subcontractors and owners, that are involved in a building project," says Phillips. "They now have collaborative screens that enable them to do all this work, directly updating a single database shared with our Forms application."

"What's important for most companies to understand about the paradigm shift of going to the internet is that there is a new class of applications that are being enabled," says Oracle's Job. "CMiC is a good example of what we recommend—they picked a few areas and used J2EE to extend their Forms application."

Even though it had to put some effort into learning Java and how to develop the collaborative applications using Oracle JDeveloper, the process of taking advantage of new Oracle technologies isn't new to CMiC. "[Our products] have always been an Oracle-based solution, so we've always tried to use as much of the database functionality as we can. Now that we've got this middle tier, we're taking advantage of that and making information available through Oracle Discoverer and Oracle Portal directly from our applications," notes Phillips.

"We're taking advantage of single sign-on in both applications (the Forms and JSP applications), so it works the same way, which is important," says Phillips, who also notes that it took a little bit of effort to make it work seamlessly. "The only tricky part we found is that you have to set up Resource Access Descriptors in the Forms applications. We didn't want to have people managing single sign-on passwords and database connections at the same time, so we wrote our own JSP application that sets up the single sign-on, creates a user in the database, updates several tables that we use, and generally makes sure that things within the applications are synchronized."

Another benefit that CMiC found by moving its application to the latest versions and integrating it with other Oracle technologies is the ability to easily integrate third-party applications into the Oracle Forms environment. "We've developed a dashboard application that relies on Web services on the back end and Macromedia Flash on the front end. We also have written an imaging application that uses Oracle Workflow. Our users can scan in documents using any third-party scanning software, index them into the database using any user-defined criteria that they wish, and display them on-screen. When they submit them, it kicks off a workflow that can launch approvals and other processes, and the document data ends up in our database as an object," says Phillips.

CMiC's imaging application is a good example of how applications can bridge technologies. For example, the maintenance section of the imaging application is written in Oracle Forms, yet the actual image viewing applications are written in JSP screens. From within the Oracle Forms screens you can define the lookup criteria and the mapping of the fields on the imaging screen to the index, and then even call up a JSP view from within the Oracle Forms application to see the original source documents. "The nice thing is that the Forms themselves use PL/SQL in the database to do most of their processing, and where we're doing the same functions in the JSP programs, we're simply reusing the PL/SQL," says Phillips. "That's a nice feature of the whole Oracle environment—that I can reuse code so easily."

Another capability that saved CMiC time and resources when creating new Java applications was Oracle's Business Components for Java (BC4J) framework. "BC4J was a big advantage for us," says Phillips. "All of our Java applications use BC4J to do all of our database interaction at a high level. It's completely different from the way that Oracle Forms does it, yet BC4J gives you the same feel as Oracle Developer."

Moving from PL/SQL Forms to Java requires not only changes to your applications but changes to your skill sets and developer resources. For CMiC, it meant moving from having 20 Oracle Forms developers originally to having 10 Oracle Forms developers and 10 Java developers today. To accomplish this transition, CMiC hired a few Java developers who knew the J2EE environment inside and out and used them to run a training course and help guide the projects and assist six of the existing PL/SQL developers to make the transition. Also invaluable were Oracle Education courses and knowledge gleaned at user conferences.

Of course, few changes are without their challenges. For CMiC, the move to Java development meant that the developers had to spend more time on the nitty-gritty of application infrastructure, and projects took longer than expected. "Programming in Java is a lot slower than what you're used to, especially at first," says Phillips. "We typically budget three to four times as long to write the same program in JSP than we would to write it as a Form. You're really working at a much lower level. Oracle JDeveloper handles so much for you, with all its wizards—it really gets you going."

Phillips is looking forward to taking advantage of Oracle 10g's new features. "We're anxiously anticipating getting to Oracle JDeveloper 10g and Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF). ADF is very, very nice because it makes Java development much more like Oracle Forms," says Phillips. "It gives you the whole idea of a visual editor, where you can drag things in and build your table automatically and connect it up with its data source and so on. That's pretty hard to do when you're just starting out in JSP programming, so we think that will be a big benefit for us."

According to Oracle's Louis, Oracle has taken steps to make developers comfortable with the transition from Oracle Forms to Oracle ADF. "Our strategy with Oracle ADF is to offer a visual and declarative development environment for J2EE that will expose concepts and a development style familiar to Forms developers," explains Louis.

To Phillips, it's almost as if CMiC's current combination of Oracle Forms applications and newer, J2EE-based applications is the perfect balance of old and new. "We've been very lucky. We've stayed with Oracle Forms through all the years, and it has worked very well for us."

Stepping Stones to Higher Application Functionality

Adapting to market requirements and delivering a flexible solution is important to Century Consultants, Ltd. Century, located in Lakewood, New Jersey, has been using Oracle Forms and Oracle Reports since 1987, starting with character version Forms 3.0 and working its way through the client/server versions 4, 5, and 6 and the Web-based versions 6i and 9i.

The company uses Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports, and Oracle Portal to create "Star_Base," its student information software that tracks things like attendance and grades and is deployed by school systems around the country. "We've gone through the process of upgrading each time, doing everything step to step to step," says Bob Magan, product development director. Century's educational customers are currently running versions 6i and 9i of Oracle Forms, along with Oracle9i Application Server Portal, Release 2.

Although Century has been committed to Oracle Forms from the beginning, they're also committed to leveraging as much of the Oracle architecture as it can. "I believe if you have PL/SQL programmers, you should continue to use them," says Magan. "But you should also look into the new technologies available and build them into your applications. The Oracle stack is flexible enough so that you can have pieces of your application written in PL/SQL and throw in some Java and other J2EE components at the same time. We've found that you don't have to totally trash what you built in an application and rewrite it completely in J2EE, but that you can slowly convert bits and pieces of it to J2EE and newer technologies."

Century is continually upgrading its application, especially with constantly changing state and federal mandates and regulations dealing with education. Now with Oracle9i and Oracle 10g, when it comes time to make application changes, Century evaluates its options to see if it's something the company wants to use J2EE for, or if it's quicker and easier to stay in a PL/SQL environment. "The way we approach it is that if we're going to go back and do a major revision of any part of our application, the first thing we look at is if there's a better way of doing it within the Oracle tools," says Magan. "We don't just automatically convert it to J2EE."

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To help them understand how to take advantage of new Oracle features and decide when it makes sense to move application logic from 9i Forms to Java, Magan turns to the Forms Upgrade Center on Oracle Technology Network (OTN). "There are typically a lot of stories of people who have done the exact same thing that you want to do, so if you run into a snag, there's a good chance that someone else has already had it and it's been resolved," says Magan. "My biggest advice to anyone is to use the Forms Upgrade Center on OTN and know that most issues you're running into have been found and documented."

Another key to Century's success has been using Oracle Portal as the entryway for its Oracle Forms and J2EE application components, which experts say is a good way for organizations to start their move toward a Java environment.Using Oracle Portal makes it almost impossible for users to tell which type of technology they're using, as well as making it easy for Century to integrate partner applications into the same environment as their Forms applications. "Once you link in your external applications from the portal, the single sign-on server does the job of managing the login information for you. So, even if you're going from application A to application B to application C, you're only logging in one time and the single sign-on server is taking care of all your credentials," explains Magan.

For Century, being able to integrate its 17 years of investment in Oracle Forms applications with external applications and J2EE applications is vital to the company's success. "We have partnered with the Tennessee Department of Education, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and the Public Consulting Group to develop a statewide Student Management System, which is hosted in Nashville. We have a few partner applications in the area of special education that aren't written in Oracle Forms or in an Oracle database, so we link them in via the portal, through the single sign-on that verifies their security and automatically logs," says Magan. "These applications are hosted on a server in Boston and the portal applications are in Tennessee. It doesn't matter whether the applications are in the same room or in the same state."

For Magan, with Oracle Application Server and Oracle Portal, the future is here now. "I would recommend that anybody who's upgrading their Oracle Forms or Oracle Reports application definitely look toward Oracle Portal to manage whatever they choose to deploy," says Magan. "There are just so many things in there that a company can take advantage of, and it doesn't take that much effort to take your application and bring it into the Oracle Portal. I think the portal is definitely the future, and I can see that pretty much every company at some point will have some type of portal as its entryway."