After several years of intensive
research in cooperation with s-lab, a special interest group of the University of
Paderborn supporting industrial partners in developing new technologies, TEAM
proudly presents the Forms Migration Services – a process to take your Forms
application to the next level using a model driven migration approach containing the TEAM Migration Assistant - a toolset for semi-automatic modernizations. Do the results justify all the effort?
Yes, definitively!
In accordance with the objective to
transform a Forms application into a maintainable ADF application, the project
team initially followed the approach of a fully automated migration. This
initial idea had to be revised, however, due to the technical differences
between the two platforms Forms and ADF. A wider approach had to be taken in
order to achieve appropriate/satisfactory results. Migrating a Forms
application using a single blue print which transforms dialogue by dialogue and
even generates a "Forms-Runtime" in ADF may represent a viable method
to generate a running ADF application; however, this application would neither
be maintainable nor would it offer any extension points to allow progression of
the application. Thus it was obvious that a more sophisticated and abstract way
of thinking was needed to solve the issues a 1:1 migration brings along.
Keeping that in mind, the project team,
consisting of TEAM developers and s-lab members, developed a new
approach to transforming and, at the same time, modernizing a Forms application
into a “true” ADF application. A major challenge in this process was the fact
that most Forms applications have been developed with a company specific Forms
framework (i.e. functions and objects extending the original Oracle Forms
framework). The new migration method is based on a multilevel modernization
process. By using tools for source code analysis, knowledge and patterns for
the specific Forms application are recognized and transformation rules can be
established. These rules provide project specific patterns to the TEAM
Migration Assistent which then generates the ADF application iteratively. Each
iterative step is to be finished manually. After each step, our migration
experts and the development team come together to discuss the lessons learned
and whether or not recent development steps or code fragments can be automated
in the next iteration step. This procedure ensures that the following iteration
steps can be finished a lot quicker.
The Forms Migration Services offered by TEAM provide a novel
integrated concept to modernize your Oracle Forms application to a
"true" ADF application that is maintainable, great looking and
enabled for future implementations!
