A Designer Maintenance Schedule is available
on OTN. As an addendum to that document, this FAQ will be updated to reflect
any frequently asked questions regarding Designer and its future.
Is Designer 10g (9.0.4)
certified for both Oracle9i Database and Oracle Database
10g? For the initial release of Oracle Designer 10g
(9.0.4) in Oracle Developer Suite10g
(9.0.4), Designer is not certified for Oracle Database 10g.
However, Oracle will quickly follow the Developer Suite 10g
(9.0.4) release with a Designer maintenance release (release 9.0.4.4) that
is certified for installation for both Oracle9i
Database and Oracle Database 10g
instances. Designer 10g (9.0.4.4) maintenance release is targeted for release
at the end of April.
Is Designer 10g (9.0.4)
certified for Oracle9iAS release 2, in addition to Oracle Application Server 10g
(9.0.4)? This is important from an Oracle Forms perspective. Oracle Forms 10g
(9.0.4) will only be certified for Oracle Application Server 10g
(9.0.4)
Will Designer be certified against new windows platforms, such as Windows 2003? Oracle intends to continue certifying Designer against the latest windows platforms, continuing its current
platform certification strategy.
Why is no new functionality being delivered with Designer? With the onset of the 10g
products, both for the application server and for the tools, Oracle reviewed
the products it delivers. The emergence of new technologies, specifically
J2EE and UML which are rapidly gaining market acceptance, has influenced the
direction Oracle is taking with Designer. With J2EE as the preferred platform,
component based, model driven and declarative techniques are provided by and
developed in JDeveloper. In other words Oracle sees JDeveloper as being the
replacement product for Designer over time.
I use Oracle Designer for database schema modeling,
generation and maintenance. Should I be planning to move off Designer?
No, you should continue to use Designer. It is currently more powerful than
the JDeveloper database modeling and generation capability. In the future
Oracle will expand JDeveloper's capability in this area and plans to provide
a mechanism to migrate database metadata from Oracle Designer to Oracle JDeveloper,
allowing you to preserve your investment in Designer.
Will I be able to continue to use Designer
for my Forms generation? Yes. Designer 10g (9.0.4) will generate Forms 10g (9.0.4) and Oracle
will continue to certify Designer against the current forms patches.
Will I be able to continue to use Designer for my
Web PL/SQL generation? Yes, Designer will generate PL/SQL for the database and Oracle will continue
to certify Designer against the current Application Server release.
Will JDeveloper provide the same features for Data
Modeling as Designer? Oracle is expanding JDeveloper's capability in this area. Already the
tool provides powerful PL/SQL code editing functionality and online database
support. 9.0.5 JDeveloper supports UML-based DB modeling and DDL generation.
It supports Tables, Columns, Keys and Constraints. This has been in preview
since August 2003. Production planned April 2004. The next increment will
include support for Views, Indexes, Sequences and Synonyms, plus additional
reconciliation for Tables, Columns, Constraints and Indexes. There are also
plans to include User-defined types, Object Tables and XML Types, and to preview
all this functionality in a release during 2004. Following that there are
plans to add Procedures, Functions, Packages, Materialized Views and Materialized
View Logs, and to rapidly extend JDeveloper's database modeling to all the
significant features of the Oracle database and to track these as they grow.
In addition support for third party database modeling and generation through
JDBC are included.
I use Designer for its underlying SCM capability.
Does this statement include SCM? What are the plans for SCM? The Designer Repository (Oracle SCM) is integral functionality and is
considered part of the product. The maintenance
schedule includes Oracle SCM in that Oracle will continue bug fixing the
repository in the same way that bugs are fixed in the client tools. Designer
and the Repository will be released in regular maintenance release cycles
as described.
I use SCM, but I don't use the application and database development tools at all. Do
I have to incur all the overhead of a full Designer client and server install? No, a cut down version of Designer, encompassing only the SCM capability, is available on OTN to licensed
Designer users. This will be refreshed periodically to include relevant bug fixes from the full product.
I Use SCM with JDeveloper only, does this statement
affect me? You can continue to use the cut down version of SCM described above and
made available on a regular basis. From JDeveloper 10.1.3, the SCM extension
will not be integral to the JDeveloper install, but will be available as a
download from OTN with the other JDeveloper extensions.
JDeveloper10g (9.0.5) is the last release of JDeveloper that will incorporate
support for OSCM in the product. The next release will only provide OSCM support
as an optional OTN download.
I use Designer for its SCM capabilities and plan
to start all future development using JDeveloper. Is there an SCM upgrade
path? As mentioned in the maintenance release document, Oracle is not planning
further development for Oracle SCM and as such recommends all new development
with JDeveloper makes use of open source tools such as CVS.
Can I do Versioning and Configuration Management
in JDeveloper in the same way as I do in Designer? JDeveloper offers different choices for your configuration and team development
environment. You can continue to use Oracle SCM with the JDeveloper extension
or you can use open source tools such as CVS.
What is the migration strategy for Oracle Designer
customers? There is no need for Designer customers to move away from Designer. Oracle
is continuing to support and bug fix Designer and will continue to have regular
maintenance releases of Oracle Designer 10g
(9.0.4). For those who value model driven development and who want to start
J2EE development, the Designer Business Component Generator generates JDeveloper
ADF Business Components. The development teams are working on a metadata migration
path to enable users to move from Designer to JDeveloper and to continue model
driven development in a Java and J2EE development environment. In addition
to this already available functionality, Oracle is also working on migrating
database metadata to be staged over coming releases.
I currently use Designer 1.3.2 (or 2.1.2 or 6.0) and
was planning to upgrade to Designer 6.0 and migrate to Designer 9i.
What do you recommend?
Once you have upgraded to Designer 6.0, Oracle recommends you migrate to Oracle
Designer 10g**.
The functionality available in Designer 6i
and 9i Designer
is the same as that offered in Designer 10g.
A move to the latest version brings the you to a supported release with all
the new functionality offered in the Server Generator, the application generation
tools such, as the Forms and the WebServer Generators, and versioning and
the configuration management capabilities. You should also be in a better
position to transition your legacy information from Designer to JDeveloper,
as the development teams are working on utilities to ease this flow.
**Please review the Migration Guide available on OTN for further assistance
in this area.
I currently generate Forms 6i
Client Server and have no plans to upgrade. What are the implications
if this message? Following Forms 6i
desupport, you may elect to continue to use Forms 6i
under extended support. In the same way, you can generate Forms 6i
using Designer 6i under
extended support. Please see Support Note 239742.1 on Metalink and
the Tools Statement of Direction (due for release on OTN)
I have a large investment in the metadata in
my Designer repository. Will I be able to migrate and preserve that investment? Oracle introduced the Designer to BC4J Generator into JDeveloper 9.0.4.
This allows users to browse module definitions in a Designer repository from
within JDeveloper, extract metadata and transform it to define ADF/BC4J business
objects - the 'model' layer of an Oracle ADF/BC4J application. In the planned
Fall 2004 preview, in addition to extending the JDeveloper database modeling
capabilities (see the question concerning database modeling),
Oracle will add the capability to browse schema definitions in Designer and
migrate them to JDeveloper. Oracle will pay close attention to customer needs
and if other specific migrations are clearly of importance to the Designer
customer base, they will be scheduled in.
The maintenance schedule mentioned above feels as
if Oracle is no longer concerned about Designer. Does Oracle plan to stop
supporting Designer? Oracle has a dedicated Designer development and quality assurance team.
There are no plans for desupporting Designer. Current plans are to continue
with regular releases of Designer as part of the Developer Suite and to continue
to certify against related software, such as Forms and the Database.
Related Statements of Direction:
Oracle Development Tools Statement of Direction (to be added)
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