FAQ

The following are the most common questions on usability and evaluation of the Forms2Net tool in order to accelerate the migration process of Oracle Forms applications to Microsoft .NET.

Which versions of Oracle® Forms are supported by Forms2Net?

The current version of Forms2Net supports Oracle Forms and Reports versions 4.5 up to 10g on top of every Oracle Database version. Typically, forms built on versions 4.5 and 5 will require Oracle Forms Builder 6i to be installed on the same machine to allow form conversion.

Does Forms2Net migrate the Oracle database?

Forms2Net targets only the migration of the application. Database schema, database objects (e.g. stored procedures and functions) and the data itself are not in the scope of Forms2Net . For customers interested in migrating the Oracle database ATX Technologies recommends the use of other software products on the market, including tools supplied by Microsoft, to assist on the database layer migration effort.

How is Forms2Net related with Microsoft's SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for Oracle?

SSMA targets the migration of Oracle databases to SQL Server (Data Layer). Forms2Net is a complementary product targeting the migration of Oracle Forms to .NET applications (Application Layer). It can be used together with SSMA to have a full migration or used alone to migrate only the application layer to Microsoft .NET, keeping the Oracle database.

What is the meaning of 'conversion' and 'migration' used in Forms2Net documentation?

Migration is the full process of transforming a Forms application into an equivalent .NET application. The semantic gap between the two worlds makes it difficult to have a completely automated process.

Conversion is the initial step of the migration, capturing the original application semantic and obtaining the maximum .NET code, following Microsoft's best practices for .NET applications. The remaining migration (code completion and testing phases), is not automated but is well supported by detailed documentation, migration patterns and specific Visual Studio add-ins in order to minimize the human effort of the whole migration and maintenance.

Therefore, migration = conversion + code completion + testing

What is the licensing model for Forms2Net?

Forms2Net is licensed on a per project basis. Please check the Licensing section for more details on the process of obtaining a license and correspondent pricing.

How do I estimate the effort and cost of a migration project?

Forms2Net Analyzer is a free tool that can be downloaded on the Forms2Net website . It collects statistical information about an Oracle Forms application. Once you have collected those statistics, you may upload them on the website and get a report on the complexity of your forms application and the estimated code completion effort. Please contact our sales department who will assist you on this process.

What are the required characteristics of the team that will complete the migration?

A small number of elements of the team must be skilled in Microsoft .NET, understand the application architecture and typical migration patterns. They should be able to analyze the initial conversion results and establish common rules and practices for the application migration, to be followed by the rest of the team. This is the result of our experience, based on the fact that every application has its own specificities and patterns. We can take advantage of that to accelerate and standardize the code completion phases and posterior maintenance. The team can be as large as you want, allowing migration parallelism after the initial setup and analysis phase. Note that very large teams in software projects may introduce a significant management effort.

How much effort is involved in completing the migration manually?

The effort involved in migrating the remaining code depends on the complexity of the application, but one important advantage of using this tool is that the handwritten code that is required for code completion is well documented and controlled. Most of the human effort will concern compilation problems related with 'type checking and casting of types' in situations where the original Oracle Forms code used very liberal constructions allowed in PL/SQL which have no trivial mapping in the .NET type system, and where therefore the correct choice for a type cannot be made at conversion time. In this situation the tool documentation includes a complete list of the potential typing errors and of the appropriate solutions. Also, there may be some code that has to be completed manually concerning bindings of User Interface Controls (UIC) with the components that implement business logic services to cover the semantic gap between the .NET framework and Oracle Forms run-time built-in behaviour. Even in this situation, the tool gives assistance to developers by generating comments in the new .NET code with links to the migration guide, which makes the code completion a well controlled and guided process.

What are the target .NET languages to which I can convert my applications?

Currently C# and VB.NET are supported.

Is Forms2Net a stand-alone Windows executable?

Forms2Net is currently available as an add-in to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

I have a team of 15 .NET developers on the migration project. Does every workstation need to be connected to Oracle?

Only the machines where the automated conversion is processed need to be connected to Oracle. The converted code should then be distributed among the developers for the code completion phase, which only require the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 environment.

How do I get support on the code completion and maintenance of the code generated by Forms2Net?

You can find information on the generated code and how to work with it either on the product documentation or the product website. The available information will evolve in time, reflecting experience with users and ongoing projects. Check the site regularly for news and updates. Further questions may be addressed to forms2net-support@atxsoftware.com .