New Statement of Direction

[UPDATED 08/21/2008]

We have just put out a new Statement of Direction on OTN.
{Remember a SOD is only an indicator of what we plan to do and not a guarantee}

The big news is that we are planning to produce Oracle Application Express 3.2.
This will be almost exclusively for our Forms Converter offering.
Forms Converter is designed to provide significant value as part of a conversion project and it is not designed to be a 100% "black-box" translation tool.
Keep reading to the bottom for more about Forms Converter and Beta testing ...

On Patrick Wolf's posting here a Mr. Anon asked an interesting question on why would you bother with a migration tool when it so easy to build components on existing tables in APEX already and concentrate on other development activities. This is an excellent question but I believe this capability is VERY important.
While it is easy to learn APEX from a developer's perspective, it is not always as easy to understand what has been built into the Oracle Forms.

If you have a project to migrate 100 or 1000 Forms of varying complexity and varying documentation (= most projects) then I believe the tool will be invaluable to enhancing your understanding of what you are migrating. Knowledge is power, and by extracting all the business logic out of Forms and allowing you to view it through our conversion screens will improve the process (irrespective of how much you generate)


Our development team are a very skilled bunch and are used to juggling multiple conflicting priorities on a daily basis so we are also steaming ahead with 4.0 features at the same time.
We realized that moving the Forms Converter piece into 3.2 would enable us to get it out the door sooner rather than having to wait for 4.0.

Now don't go asking me for dates - You know I can't give any dates.
The best I can do is say that 3.2 will be "Coming to a store near you soon".
{"Soon" is such an obtuse word as it could mean next week (which it definitely won't be) or some other point many months away}
4.0 will be sometime in 2009 with the final date being largely dependent on how some of our new features like Application Express Websheets perform in Early Adopters and how long it takes us to make sure they are stable and of our usual high quality.

Forms Converter - Samples & Limited Early Adopters
As part of our 3.2 development of Forms Converter we need your help and input.

We need examples of Oracle Forms from 6i, 9i and 10g. Oracle Forms 6i samples are especially useful. We are after varying complexities including simple, medium and complex Oracle Forms.

What we need are the XML file (created from the FORMS2XML Utility - .fmb file if absolutely necessary), DDL scripts to create the tables, and a small volume of sample data. As a bare minimum we need sample data for the code / lookup tables. It would be a huge bonus if you can include screen shots of the Forms. Lastly, any related technical specifications, design documents, etc. that explain the functionality would be a real asset.

Please email a zip file, renamed to xxxx.zipp as Oracle mail will not accept messages with a .zip extension, to me at david.peake@oracle.com.
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Our Limited Early Adopters program will be performed on a hosted environment (similar to how we do standard "open" Early Adopters) but will not be open to the general public. The reason for this is Limited Early Adopter testers will be working closely with us one-on-one to ensure we get the feedback we need to improve our product and be sought for advice and counsel on specific aspects of the migration.

Qualities I am looking for are Oracle Forms gurus who may or may not know Oracle APEX very well.
Participants would also be expected to provide some Oracle Forms examples to use to conduct their own testing.

If you are interested in being a Forms Converter Limited Early Adopter tester please send me an email.
Please be aware we may not be able to accept all interested parties into the program.

Regards,
David