Thursday, September 11, 2008

Forms Conversion Early Adopters

Initially the plan was to conduct a "Limited" Early Adopters (EA) for our new Forms Conversion Application Express 3.2. The intent was to have a small number of customers and work one-on-one with them to determine how well the tool performed.

We are not going to have this "Limited" Early Adopters now, but instead move straight to our normal Early Adopters that will be open to anyone and everyone. The main reason for this is we were close some weeks back to having a somewhat stable user interface for our new offering which we were looking to release. Then we basically ripped most of it apart and started rebuilding the majority of the screens. The end result is going to be a much better thought out design that will be easier to use and more productive.

We are still weeks away from getting all the screens put back together again and functioning the way we want. The majority of the development team is attending Oracle Openworld so there is another week before we can release the Early Adopters.

Once we get closer I will do another post.

To all those who sent me emails asking to be part of the "Limited" EA, I have been swamped preparing for Oracle Openworld and other events so my apologies for not responding to all of you.

Please be patient - I know the wait will be worthwhile!

Regards,
David

4 comments:

moose said...

I would like to be a tester for your Early Adopters release.
I believe in conversion software, I have written a rpt to C converter about 8 years ago.
I have the forms skills and a Forms 6i Application to use.
I would like to do any thing in my power to make your product successful

therogers said...

I have used 3.2 to convert a very simple form. The form has two cavases, action items, text items, menu items and plls (The form was 100% generated with Designer 10.1.2.0.2). None of the plls converted and theoretically 67% of the form converted. The Apex converted form was unusable. Apex 3.2 forms conversion tool doesn't work and I do not recommend it to the user community.

Unknown said...

therogers.
While I welcome everyone's opinion, I suggest you read the documentation before making such rash statements as "forms conversion tool doesn't work".

We clearly state that the business logic in the triggers, program units, and PL/SQL libraries won't be converted.

There are no "silver bullets" for converting Oracle Forms and you must treat any conversion as a project. If you expect a fully polished application straight out of the box you will always be sadly disappointed. Our tool provides you with a first-cut application that will need UI enrichment and re-implementation of the business logic.

Our approach is to convert as much of the UI as possible (remembering this is a HTML application and not Java Applet) and provide you with tracking capabilities.

Many of our customers have found our Forms conversion tool very useful to jump start their project.

Unknown said...

Dear David,

can you please point out the real business value for converting forms to Apex?
As far as I understand there is only an UI conversion only
It seems strange to me still Oracle doesn't provide a real conversion tool for forms

thank you in avdance,
khair