Oracle Forms is the oldest development tool in Oracle toobox that is still in active development. It was first conceived in the late 80ies as an interactive development environment (you answered questions and the tool created a runnable application for you). It later gained a user interface for development and a scripting language (client side PL/SQL). While the first incarnations only ran in Character Mode and Block mode terminals, later versions added Motif, Windows, Macintosh and Web deployment options.

Forms 4.5, 5, 6 and 6i could run in client/server mode, but Forms 9i and later only can only run web deployed. In web deployment, the user interface is presented in a browser by the Forms User Interface Java applet developed by Oracle. This applet communicates with the Forms Server, where the actual application logic is executed.

Migrating to web deployment means that you need to make some (often trivial) changes to the application, as e.g. Forms HOST calls no longer execute on the client, but rather on the middle tier (the new CLIENT_HOST command corresponds to the client/server HOST command).

The upcoming version 11g contains features to better integrate the Forms User Interface Applet with the web page it runs on: The Form can trigger JavaScript events on the page and JavaScript on the page can trigger events in Oracle Forms.

The client/server versions are now unsupported, but the latest versions (from 10g Rel. 2 onwards) are covered by Oracle Unlimited Support with so-called “sustaining support” forever.

Pro
Because Oracle Forms automatically handles row locking, transactions, etc., an experienced Oracle Forms developer can produce complex applications very quickly using Oracle Forms.

Oracle database developers do not need to learn a new language, as Oracle Forms uses PL/SQL.

Con
After Forms 6i, Forms applications need to run web deployed. This has several implications:

• You need an application server, adding license cost.
• You need a very specific version of Java in the browser on the client.

Many consider Oracle Forms to be a legacy technology. It is slowly getting harder to find Oracle Forms developers, and the default user interface looks somewhat dated.

Articles

(Note it is intended this section be broken into its own wiki page once there is enough content to merit it)

A list of articles beyond the Oracle documentation set about Oracle Forms:

• Return to Formsville (Chris Muir and Penny Cookson)