Oracle Forms applications are very powerful with allowing end users to input data into an Oracle Database through the use of a web interface. The source code for the Oracle Forms applications require ongoing support with additional development and maintenance. Depending on how large the application is, there may be an excessive amount of code in each form module with some added complexity to each one. There may be a possibility that some of the source code in each could be extracted to the database. In addition, there may also be a chance that some code may not even be used in day-to-day operations. Here are some reasons why you should clean up forms code with PITSS.CON.
Unused Forms Code
Some of the application objects within an Oracle Forms module may not be used at all. We refer to this as either unused or dead code. Dead code may be able to be removed from your Oracle Forms application to reduce the amount of unnecessary clutter within it. PITSS.CON comes with Application Engineering, a PITSS.CON module which allows you to completely re-engineer your application. One of the features of Application Engineering is the Unused Objects Analysis or Dead Code Analysis. After your application has been parsed, the Unused Objects Analysis will take a deep look into your application to see which objects in each module is not used within the application. For example, the Unused Objects Analysis will look to see which modules or program units are not being used within the application.
In addition, the Unused Objects Analysis will also identified database objects which are not being used by the application. However, before considering the removal of any database objects, please make sure that such objects are not being used for any other application or program.
After running the Unused Objects Analysis, you will then see which objects can be removed from your application. This will help simplify the application so that it will be much easier to maintain. With any dead code removed from the application, you will now know that all remaining source code is needed for the application to work properly.
Business Logic Extraction
Oracle Forms applications may also contain a lot of business logic which can be easily exported to the database. Within PITSS.CON’s Application Engineering, the BL Assistant is capable of extracting all the business logic from your application and convert them into database packages. This process simplifies the source code so that it is not only easier to maintain but also easier to migrate away from Oracle Forms. Along with cleaning up dead code, extracting the business logic can make migrating Oracle Forms to technologies such as ADF or APEX much easier.
In addition, performing BL extraction works well with Oracle Reports. As Oracle Reports has been deprecated, extracting the business logic from your reports to the database will make migrating to other reporting tools such as JasperReports or Oracle Analytics Publisher (formerly called BI Publisher) even easier.
PITSS.CON is able to help analyze what is not being used in the Oracle Forms application as well as to extract all business logic to the Oracle database. Please contact PITSS today on how PITSS.CON may be used to help with your Forms and Reports cleanup needs for better maintainability or for the first step for your next Oracle Forms migration project.
