Stuttgart/Troy (MI) 01/21/2025 – Oracle Forms 14c is here. Long awaited, the new Forms Release 14c was published just before Christmas. Oracle Forms 14.1.2 offers numerous new features and is more modern than ever. At PITSS and its PITSS.CON toolset, preparations for Forms 14c are in full swing. The new PITSS.CON release offers numerous new features for Forms 14c. PITSS will give a sneak preview in its webinar on February 19, 2025 with Senior Principal Product Manager Michael Ferrante. 

Forms 14c is here and with it numerous new and improved functionalities in the areas of:

• Runtimes 
• Forms Builder
• Forms Standalone Launcher
• Administration
• Installation

At PITSS, enthusiasm for the new Oracle Forms 14c release is high and preparations for the enhancements in the new PITSS.CON release are in full swing. Stephan La Rocca, Head of Product Development at PITSS, recommends that his customers upgrade to 14c as soon as possible in order to benefit from the new Forms features: “PITSS.CON can provide you with perfect support for Oracle Forms 14c. This starts even before the upgrade to 14c. With PITSS.CON, the existing application is first cleaned up and thus freed from legacy issues. After the upgrade to Forms 14c, PITSS.CON can be used to roll out the desired new features across all Forms in the entire application at lightning speed. “Our customers will be particularly impressed by the new UI.”

PITSS invites customers and interested parties to a joint webinar with Oracle Senior Principal Product Manager Michael Ferrante on February 19, 2024. In this webinar, not only exciting new functionalities will be presented, but also how to easily enjoy them with the new PITSS.CON release. Register for the webinar here. 

Options to upgrade to Oracle Forms 14c stress-free and benefit from it

PITSS offers its customers expert advice, individual support or even complete outsourcing for the new Forms release. From analysis of the Forms application, through the upgrade and optimization to 14c, to further modernization projects – the PITSS.CON products support you in all phases of the maintenance project. 

For the perfect start with PITSS.CON and Oracle Forms 14c, PITSS offers various options, depending on the individual customer situation, to familiarize yourself with Oracle Forms 14c or to implement the new features in your own Forms application.

Offer 1: 
Oracle Forms 14 Live Experience Workshop
Experience Forms 14c on your own sources.

Offer 2:
Oracle Forms 14 Installation Service
We install everything, such as WLS, FMW incl. development, to evaluate Forms 14 in your own environment at your convenience. 

Offer 3:
Regain Control Service
Use the new Oracle Forms version to bring applications up to date: Documentation, cleaning up technical debt and being able to use all Forms 14c features across the board.

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Stuttgart/Troy (MI) 12/03/2024 – Forms 14 is coming. That is certain. Whether in 2024 or early 2025 is hardly important after all the many announcements and delays.

Forms 14 is coming and for some customers it is a blessing that the many pleas, requests, petitions and visits to Oracle HQ have ultimately led to success. You can continue to develop and operate your tried-and-tested platform beyond the current end of support in 2026 until at least December 2032. At least that is the status quo today, in December 2024. A further extension beyond 2032 is at least possible. But perhaps the demand in eight years’ time will be more manageable.

For others, this new release and the associated long support period (five years of Premier Support plus three years of Extended Support) offers enough time to plan a migration and tackle it without too much time pressure.

The Oracle Forms community is still large and strong
Oracle has listened to its customers and made an important pro-customer decision, even though Oracle is developing its new systems with APEX and no longer with Forms. For this reason, a decision in favor of Forms is anything but self-evident.

The tireless efforts of the large and active Forms customer base and the advocates in various committees and user groups, above all the DOAG, the German Oracle User Group, have made an impression on those responsible at Oracle. Who knows what the situation would look like without this ‘friendly pressure’ from the base.

PITSS is ready – you too!
Forms 14 is coming and the PITSS team is prepared and has done its homework. The PITSS.CON toolset is up to date, can process all Forms versions – even those that have long been running under the flag of Sustaining Support – knows the new functionalities of Forms 14 and can generate Forms 14.

To get a first impression of how Forms 14 looks and feels for your current Forms environment, we will offer a “Forms 14 Live Experience Workshop” as soon as Forms 14 is available. Here we will use one of your Forms applications to demonstrate our approach, including analyzing the current Forms modules, cleaning up any code deficits and generating your application as a Forms 14 application. All live. Step by step. Comprehensible and impressive.

This is on a small scale what we mean by “Regain Control” on a large scale. Regain control of your Forms application, purify and stabilize your Forms environment before you take the step to Forms 14. Our tools, our PITSS method and our many years of experience in Forms upgrades and Forms migration offer you the security you need to bring even large and complex Forms environments up to the new software standard.

Or do you need support to set up a test environment for Forms 14 in your data center? Or in the cloud? Just let us know. Don’t hesitate to call or contact us. You’re not bothering us, we’re looking forward to it!

Oracle Forms 14 is coming and the entire PITSS team is ready!

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06.05.2024 Stuttgart/Troy – The new Forms2APEX Modeler 24.1.1 is available and it is one thing above all – even more efficient than its predecessor. It has succeeded in automating even more tasks in an Oracle Forms to APEX modernization project. This increase in efficiency and further improvements to the software are the result of current modernization projects in which the Forms2APEX Modeler has already impressed customers and project teams with enormous time savings and high-quality results.

A central aspect of a successful Forms to APEX modernization is the transfer of valuable software artifacts (PL/SQL code) from Oracle Forms to the database in order to make the code available for the new APEX application. In the new version of the Forms2APEX Modeler, there are more options for transferring PL/SQL code to the database. This means that significantly more objects (e.g. PRE and POST-QUERY triggers) can now be transferred and at the same time adapted to individual requirements. This means that code can be added automatically if required (e.g. for additional logging and additional error handling), but the complete structure of the database packages (user interface driven or table API based) can also be decided. This safeguards investments in existing validations, transaction logic and implemented business processes.

The interactive, visual representation of the Oracle Forms structure also makes it easy for developers who do not have in-depth knowledge of Oracle Forms to familiarize themselves with the existing sources within a modernization.

Depending on the selection of the APEX region to be created and the field and record validations found in Oracle Forms, validations, dynamic actions and alerts are automatically generated in APEX. In Oracle Forms applications, the validation triggers are the most frequently used triggers alongside the command areas, which means that this generation can save a great deal of time and ensure that validations are not “forgotten” or incorrectly applied.

When transferring Oracle Forms blocks to APEX regions, the new Forms2APEX Modeler release gives developers more options for the master-detail use of regions. For example, the new Modeler helps with the selection of regions with context-related information.

In release 24.1.1 of the Forms2APEX Modeler, a completely new and revised checklist has been developed for the remaining work after importing the generated sources. The dashboard shows project managers the status of the current modernization project at a glance, including the next modules to be completed, the current activities of the developers and the progress of the migrated modules. For the developers, the checklist is a safe and convenient tool to ensure that nothing is overlooked in the remaining work. The context-sensitive display of objects, properties and code makes the use of the Forms Builders almost superfluous.

Please feel free to make an appointment with us:

Your Contact

Uta Daniels
Assistant of Sales Management

udaniels@pitss.com

+49 711/914-012-12

Review of the webinar “Top
challenges in an Oracle Forms
to APEX modernization”

The overwhelming response, with over 180 registrations, underlines the significant interest in this crucial topic. A special thanks goes to Mónica Godoy, Senior Principal Product Manager APEX at Oracle, who enriched the discussion enormously with her great knowledge.

Stuttgart 03/25/2024 – On March 13, 2024, the modernization expert PITSS hosted the live webinar “Top challenges in an Oracle Forms to APEX modernization”. Developers, Programmers, System Architects, Project and IT Managers from all over the world were invited.

In the webinar, the experts provided answers to the most frequently asked questions about Forms to APEX projects in a panel discussion. The most important questions were collected before and during the webinar. The audience took the opportunity to ask their questions. From technology decisions and project planning to the transformation and possibilities of the new APEX application, everything got covered.

An important point of discussion for all Project Managers was Business Logic to Database and its immense importance within a modernization as well as best practices from real world modernization projects.

The numerous advantages of modernization according to Oracle APEX presented by the panel were then able to motivate even the last doubters to face the topic with enthusiasm and confidence. After all, modernization, redesign, simplification, more functionalities and possibilities, no limitations for mobile devices and less complexity in the application are just some of the weighty arguments for the transformation to APEX.

If you want to watch the entire webinar you can request the recording here.

Source code analysis (or static analysis) software helps identify buggy code. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to write secure code in the first place? For a lot of enterprises, their legacy software has accrued years of technical debt, so the enterprise was unable to write secure and pristine code along the way.

One of the fastest growing areas in the software security industry is source code analysis tools, also known as static analysis tools. These tools review source code line by line to detect security vulnerabilities and provide advice on how to remediate problems they find – ideally before the code goes into production.

The entire software security market was worth about $300 million in 2007. It’s estimated that the tools portion of that market doubled from 2006 to 2007 to about $180 million. About half of that is attributable to static analysis tools, which amounted to about $91.9 million.

And no wonder; according to Gartner, Inc., close to 90% of software attacks are aimed at the application layer. If security were integrated earlier in the software development lifecycle, flaws would be uncovered earlier, reducing costs and increasing efficiency compared with removing defects later through patches or never finding them at all. Although there is no replacement for security-aware design and a methodical approach to creating more secure applications, code-scanning tools are a very useful addition to the process.

Despite the high degree of awareness, many companies are behind the curve in their use of static analysis tools, possibly due to the big process changes that these tools entail.

Key Decisions in Source Code Analysis

1 Should you start with static tools or dynamic tools or use both?

In addition to static analysis, which reviews code before it goes live, there are also dynamic analysis tools, which conduct automated scans of production Web applications to unearth vulnerabilities. In other words, dynamic tools test from the outside in, while static tools test from the inside out.

Many organizations start with dynamic testing, just to get a quick assessment of where their applications stand. In some cases, the groups that start this initiative are in security or audit compliance departments and don’t have access to source code. The natural second step is to follow up with static analyzers, enabling developers to fix the problems found by dynamic analysis tools. Some companies continue using both, because each type yields different findings.

2 Do you have the source code?

Most static analyzers scan source code, but what happens if you want to analyze third-party software or code written so long ago that you only have the executable? In that case you could try a tool that offers binary code scanning through a software as a service platform. A vendor may not be willing to give you source code, but they will give you executables or binary in many cases.

Source Code Analysis Tools: Evaluation Criteria

• Support for the programming languages you use. Some companies support mobile devices, while others concentrate on enterprise languages like Java, .Net, C, C++ and even Cobol.
• Good bug-finding performance, using a proof of concept assessment. Hint: Use an older build of code you had issues with and see how well the product catches bugs you had to find manually. Look for both thoroughness and accuracy. Fewer false positives means less manual work.
• Internal knowledge bases that provide descriptions of vulnerabilities and remediation information. Test for easy access and cross-referencing to discovered findings.
• Tight integration with your development platforms. Long-term, you’ll likely want developers to incorporate security analysis into their daily routines.
• A robust finding-suppression mechanism to prevent false positives from reoccurring once you’ve verified them as a non-issue.
• Ability to easily define additional rules so the tool can enforce internal coding policies.
• A centralized reporting component if you have a large team of developers and managers who want access to findings, trending and overview reporting.

Do’s and Don’ts of Source Code Analysis

• Don’t underestimate adoption time required. Most static analysis projects are initiated by security or compliance, not developers, who may not immediately embrace these tools.
• Do analyze pricing as different vendors have different pricing structures and your enterprise has different needs.
• Do plan to amend your processes. Tools are no replacement for strong processes that ensure application security from the beginning, starting with defining requirements, which should focus on security as much as functionality.
• Do retain the human element. While the tools will provide long lists of vulnerabilities, it takes a skilled professional to interpret and prioritize the results.
• Don’t forget the business case. You’ve got to unite the business and technical sides to ensure everyone is on the same page and that you know what to do with the results.
• Do consider using more than one tool or a tool that performs a variety of functions that will be critical to analyzing your legacy application.

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Since Reports will not be part of future Forms releases, customers are left with the question of what to do. Oracle intends to push Forms customers towards the use of BI Publisher, which is Oracle’s preferred replacement for Reports. Therefore Forms 12c has been delivered with an much easier integration of the BI Publisher Reporting solution.

But are there any other alternatives out for Oracle Forms customers? In this blog, as part of our Oracle Reports series, we give an overview of the some of the most popular solutions when it comes to Oracle Reports alternatives.

The Last Reports Release

As early as October 2016, Oracle announced that Oracle Fusion Middleware 12.2.1.3.0 was the last report release. In addition, they revealed that Oracle Reports support would fully retire in 2023. Enterprise applications based on the Oracle Fusion middleware stack, which includes Oracle Forms and Reports, are therefore faced with a big problem. They need to immediately plan their new reporting strategy. But what Reports alternatives are currently on the market and what are their benefits?

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JasperReports

Why should you consider Jasper Reports as a serious Oracle Reports alternative?

Well there are quite a few good reasons, but the main one: JasperReports is open source – well at least to a certain degree. JasperReports is developed and maintained by Jaspersoft. You can create your JasperReports using the main library and distribute them as long as you don’t change the source code. If you need further support from JasperSoft or different licensing, then you have to buy additional products.

The second main reason for Jasper is, that it is written in Java, which is widely used. JasperReports can handle various data source options: JDBC, Hibernate, XML, EJB, POJO. While there are many data sources possible, there are loads of export formats available: PDF, HTML, XLS, RTF, ODT, XML, CSV, TXT, DOCX.

JasperReports from TIBCO is probably the Java based open source solution with the widest community. Similar to BIRT, reports development takes place in the Eclipse IDE and at runtime, the engine can be integrated into any Java application. In contrast to BIRT, Jasper can also be consumed via a scheduler or web services. That Oracle Forms integration very flexible and diverse.

Strengths

• Broad coverage of various data sources
• Pixel-perfect issues possible
• Very performant for long reports

Weaknesses

• Cumbersome subreports for multiple data sources in a report
• Pixel-perfect issues possible
• Few out-of-the-box aggregate features

Commitment, Problems, and Solutions

The possibility of integrating JasperReports via WebServices and URL calls also makes the tool interesting outside of pure Java application development. Pixel-perfect printing also allows safe use for classic tasks such as labels, barcodes and forms. If it is the first step in the Java world, the learning curve should not be underestimated like in BIRT.

While using Jasper Reports has some benefits it comes with some negative aspects and problems when you are moving from Oracle Reports. The biggest problem for most Oracle Reports developers will be the fact, that Jasper is not supporting PL/SQL. So if there is a lot of logic or validation in your reports we recommend to move the PL/SQL Code to the database and refactor the validation within Java.

Another problem could be, that you need Java knowledge to utilize JasperReports: If you already have Java knowledge in your company your Java developers will find it easier to work with JasperReports, but if your developers are pure PL/SQL developers Java training to a certain extend is not a bad idea. Also Java resources are quite common (Java is still the most famous programming language).

No PL/SQL support	move PL/SQL to DB/Java
No validation triggers	refactor logic with Java
Generally limited triggers	refactoring, sub-reports
No detailed filtering of query groups	refactoring
No PL/SQL formula columns	refactoring
Too many sub-reports can result in very poor performance because each sub-report opens its own database connection, thread and query	perfomance test + refactoring, if necessary

Oracle BI Publisher

Oracle’s official successor and recommendation for reporting is the Oracle BI Publisher. If asked, then Oracle would say there is only one real Oracle Reports alternative: Oracle BI Publisher. But BI Publisher (in the past XMLPublisher) is not a one-to-one replacement for Reports; it’s rather another option for reporting that is quite different from Reports.

BI Publisher divides the reporting into data, layout and language.

This changes the flow of work when it comes to the creation of a report. The advantage is, that reports that use the same data source but have a different layout must not be created multiple times. For creating these different layout-templates the development environment or a Microsoft Word Add-in can be utilized. An additional advantage of BI Publisher compared to Reports is that BI Publisher supports many sources and export formats.

One is not limited to an Oracle Database as a source of data – you can use different other sources like WebServices, files or external systems. Those can be exported to a wide range of formats like: PDF, PPT, SML, Excel to different output channels (printer, filesystem, mail etc.). BI Publisher additionally offers a dashboard functionality with which users can create their own reports. All of those mentioned possibilities make BI Publisher to a not to cheap Enterprise Reporting solution.

If you have licensed the iAS-EE the use of BI Publisher is free of an extra charge.He also supplanted Oracle Reports in Oracle’s own ERP suite. The strict separation between layout and data collection goes two steps further and makes it possible for the end user to create, manage and consume their own reports very intuitively via an online-builder and also to make this separation with standard XML technologies an efficient one Multilingualism of the reports. The BI Publisher is available through the metrics Named-User-Plus (395 €) or Processor (39,500 €).

Strengths

• High degree of modularization (sub-templates, reuse)
• Self-service portal for central reporting solution
• Bursting and online dashboard
• May be covered by Oracle Forms license

Weaknesses

• Requires know-how from XSL-FO
• Pixel perfect printing only cumbersome
• Requires BI Publisher Server within the Weblogic servert

Commitment

If the Forms and Reports application is licensed on the basis of an Oracle Application Enterprise Edition, the BI Publisher is the natural successor. The integration with Forms is predefined by Oracle and the integration into other applications based on APEX, ADF or other Java frameworks is very easy. The range of functions certainly surpasses all other alternative solutions.

Eclipse BIRT

BIRT is an open source solution from the Eclipse Foundation for the preparation, visualization and reporting of data within rich client or web applications based on Java. Report design and implementation takes place within the Eclipse IDE and a BIRT Report Designer. Then, applications integrate via the Report Engine, which can be integrated into any Java application with a Java API.

Strengths

• Broad coverage of various data sources
• Great variety of different output formats
• Powerful charting engine

Weaknesses

• Graphic elements are missing
• Pixel perfect printing only cumbersome
• Page-related values (subtotals, page numbers) are only cumbersome

Commitment

In a holistic Java-oriented application development, BIRT certainly finds its rightful place. The existing BIRT Report Viewer can be used as an independent application and enriches the functionality of your application out of the box.

APEX Office Print

In the field of application development with Oracle APEX, the Belgian company APEX R & D has developed the product APEX Office Print (AOP). Data from the Oracle database or usable web services are linked to Office templates (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) and can be output in PDF or Office formats. Additional functionalities include integrated mailing functionality, various barcodes and the ability to generate interactive reports. The licensing model distinguishes between the cloud solution on a rental basis and the on-prem installation.

Strengths

• Flexible through various APIs
• Simple template creation via Office Tools
• Easy to integrate in the apex environment

Weaknesses

• Complicated creation of pixel-perfect printing
• Requires Apex version 4.2 or higher in the database
• Business logic from PL / SQL is difficult to adopt

Commitment

If your Forms applications future plans are to migrate to APEX, the APEX Office Print reports are almost perfect. The lightweight installation (based on APEX) offers a clear added value with interactive reports.

PL/ PDF

PL / PDF is a reporting tool of the Hungarian Oracle partner OraNext, which can only create documents as PDF, DOCX or XLSX with PL / SQL resources in the Oracle database. As a layout designer, a Word or Excel template can be used. The licensing allows a model by output format or per server.

Strengths

• Performant for large data retrieval – runs directly in the database
• Based solely on PL / SQL
• Small footprint, can be easily integrated into the application

Weaknesses

• Does not support other output formats
• Linked to a database and thus not usable as enterprise service for other applications
• Limited functionality (no BI, no self-service, no multilanguage support out of the box, etc.)

Commitment

PL / PDF is ideal if a manageable number of well-defined reports has to be created in the tightly-knit environment of the application. The integration is easy and easy to use for PL / SQL savvy developers.

Which target technology do other report users choose?

The answer to the question of where most of the market will go is usually its reasons. That’s why in our September 2016 webinar “The End of Oracle Reports” we asked more than 100 attendees about the technology they plan to use to replace Oracle Reports.

Remarkably, as many as 79% of participants were still unsure or undecided about the technology choice. Due to the importance of the decision, however, it is understandable and sensible on the other side that a final decision is not “broken over the knee”.

Among those who made their decision, Jasper Reports is the clear favorite, followed by Oracle BI Publisher and PL / PDF. However, few webinar participants considered BIRT, APEX Office Print, or a completely different tool for the best possible solution, but this does not have to be an exclusion criterion. As mentioned earlier, almost every technology has its raison d’être, if it suits the individual needs of the company.

Migration Issues

After deciding on a solution, you should also consider how a migration from Oracle Reports to the target technology will look. What all of these Oracle Reports alternatives have in common is the fact that there are different ways to approach the migration process.
Data model: In general, migrating your reports does not change the underlying data model. Often, however, migration is taken as an opportunity to clean up technical debt and reporting processes. Consolidate double queries, validate calculations, and add a future-proof report layer, which also provides valuable data for other BI solutions.
Layout: Reports has created a definition that can not be arbitrarily transferred to other tools with its design of the layout via coordinates of the elements and repeating frames (which can also be nested arbitrarily). A rough approach succeeds in every migration, but the biggest effort is surely to get everything back to its right place. Especially the tools that do not support natively pixel perfect printing prove to be a bigger hurdle.

Conclusion

Oracle Forms customers are currently under some pressure regarding the use of Oracle Reports. Since the last Forms Release 12.2.1.3.0, it has been confirmed that Oracle Reports will no longer be supported by 2023 at the latest. This creates the need to look for a suitable alternative in the market. In this paper, you were presented with five different solution alternatives, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The decision depends on many factors within your application as well as the environment within which this application is developed, maintained and used. We will gladly show you which alternative is best for you in a more detailed analysis.

Your Contact

Uta Daniels Assistant
of Sales Management

udaniels@pitss.com

+49 711/914-012-12