Moving from Forms 10g to 11g

Remember that there is a new version PL/SQL engine taking care of calls to the database. I stumbled upon a strange error moving from 10g to 11g.

Now in 11g, the PL/SQL is more restricted in functions behaviour.

A function MUST return av value. So code that looked like this, roughly, in Forms 10g passed, but should not have passed. When run in a 11g environment there are strange behaviour of this new more robust view of a function. Some of these errors can be hard to find, but a &debug and/or

MESSAGE('Informative text');

does the trick.

Here is what passed earlier, but no longer during run-time. It compiles, but is giving strange errors in Forms 11g. Note that the solution is just to RETURN something in the THEN-clause.

FUNCTION MyFunc(i_personId) RETURN VARCHAR2 IS
  l_MyVariable VARCHAR2(80);

BEGIN
 IF some_expression 
   THEN NULL;
   ELSE
   /* Do something */
   RETURN('RESULT');
 END IF;

END;

Smaller foot print WebLogic Server

Find the file \user_projects\domains\ClassicDomain\bin\setDomainEnv.cmd and edit it.
In the beginning set JAVA_VENDOR to be Sun.
set JAVA_VENDOR=Sun
Change these values
set XMS_SUN_32BIT=256

set XMX_SUN_32BIT=512
to
set XMS_SUN_32BIT=128
set XMX_SUN_32BIT=256

Further more, find set EXTRA_JAVA_PROPERTIES=-Xms256m -Xmx512m and change that
to set EXTRA_JAVA_PROPERTIES=-Xms64m -Xmx128m. That will reduce foot print of the WebLogic Server substansially.

Last, change the same parameters for Reports. set EXTRA_JAVA_PROPERTIES=-Xms256m -Xmx512m to
set EXTRA_JAVA_PROPERTIES=-Xms64m -Xmx128m

Oracle Forms 11g and WebLogic Server

Remember that there is no local flavour of the old and useful - imho - OC4J Oracle Application Server Containsers for J2EE 10g in the new Forms 11g environment.
That could - and will present a problem to be solved- in the developer environment of the application life cycle management.

Further, the WebLogic Server needs a larger footprint that the old way of doing application development using the OC4J locally on your - typically - PC. Test and production environments is another more solvable issue, since they are mostly Linux based environments. But the development usually are done using the traditional PC with XP.

I have seen trouble installing the Forms 11g on a Vista PC so do not try that at home, it might not even be certified. Please consult the certification table at My Oracle Support for information on that issue.

There are means to lower the foot print for the local WLS Server that is needed if you want do perform basic tests on your PC environment. There are parameters to set, you will find them on google.

Memory lane...minnenas gata...

procedure query_details ( detail varchar2 ) is
begin
go_block(detail);
check_package_failure;
execute_query;
end;

Visst var det längesedan...

Oracle 11g Reports enhancements

Oracle Reports is here to stay as well, there is lots and lots of money and people time invested in that product. The new release makes it more easy to hide the sequential number in the URL created, now you can say "lets do it random" so it is more hard to guess. In previous releases you could easily see other reports by just decrease the seq nr in the URL by one. If the report was there you could see it.

Also, the JVM is the same JVM as the Forms process, so there is performance gains to do if you are calling Reports from Forms. Most of us still do... And further, there is no need to pass the password anymore to the Reports call. That is taken care of.

Oracle Forms future and Oracle 11g Database

Oracle Forms is here to stay, officials says at Oracle Open World. So, stay calm you Forms Developers out there. The new Oracle Forms 11g has many new features though to make it easy to incorporate new functionality, using web services or Javascript.

Also, Oracle Forms 11g has the capability to react asynchronous to external events, that has not been possible with earlier editions of Forms.

Speaking of editions, upgrading your application in a 24/7 environment is now possible as well. Using the feature in Oracle Database 11g R2 called Edition-Based Redefinition. Simply speaking it works on synonyms, views and PL/SQL-objects. And you have a pre-state and a post-state of the application running in parallell. Looks like a good trick. Lets try this at home! :-)

Oracle Open World has started

This Sunday it all started, the Oracle Develop sessions. Tom Kyte was a blast, as always, talked about developers and what we do wrong.

Also, early this morning there was an excellent presentation on integrating Oracle Forms into Application Express. Worth looking into.

The ApEx platform is a platform to be counted on.