How to launch a Forms 11g manual trace without using Enterprise Manager:
1. Launch Forms Trace: Open your forms application; however, for the URL simply add the following parameters to the end of your Forms URL “&record=forms&tracegroup=debug”.
2. Reproduce the error that you are trying to debug
3. Open Command Prompt or your SSH terminal
4. Go to %MIDDLEWARE_HOME%\user_projects\domains\%domain_name%\bin, and run setDomainEnv.cmd (In Unix, run $MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/$DOMAIN_NAME/bin/setDomainEnv.sh
5. Update CLASSPATH in your Command Prompt session (or SSH session):
a. Set CLASSPATH=%CLASSPATH%;C:\Oracle\Middleware\as_1\jlib\frmxlate.jar (In Unix, run: export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/oracle/middleware/as_1/jlib/frmxlate.jar)
b. Go to C:\Oracle\Middleware\asinst_1\FormsComponent\forms\trace (/oracle/middleware/asinst_1/FormsComponent/forms/trace)
6. You should see a forms_%pid_number%.trc, for example say the pid number for your forms session is 1234, the file will be forms_1234.trc. However, this file is not in a friendly format; thus we can convert it to a text file.
7. java oracle.forms.diagnostics.Xlate datafile=trace_file.trc outputfile=my_text_file.txt outputclass=WriteOutTEXT
For example,
java oracle.forms.diagnostics.Xlate datafile=forms_1234.trc outputfile=forms_1234.txt outputclass=WriteOutTEXT
8. Running this command will convert the trace file to text format. Now you can open and view the trace file.
NOTE: Updated December 20, 2013 with steps for Linux/Unix systems.
