Given our long history of custom application development, one of the most common questions we are asked is “What should we do with our Oracle Forms applications?”There is a common misconception that Oracle intends to discontinue support for Oracle Forms. We believe that this stems from two sources:
- Oracle makes no money from selling development tools. Due to this fact, it has very little “visibility” within the Oracle Sales and Marketing Teams and is not actively promoted.
- Misinterpretation of Oracle Statement’s of Direction. In the past, Oracle has indicated a final support lifetime date but did not make it clear that it was for a specific version. Thus… the rumors began!
Rest assured… Oracle Forms is alive and well! In fact, Oracle continues to release new versions and has stated numerous times that they are committed to this development tool. Like all Oracle products, there is an end-of-life date for specific versions. Oracle is committed to continued version releases with new functionality and features.
If you have applications built on Oracle Forms 6i, you are already facing decisions about whether to upgrade or to rebuild. Having done several migrations from Oracle Forms 6i, it is our opinion that upgrading is the easier and more cost efficient option.
If you have Oracle Forms skills in-house, feel confident in a decision to use Forms for continued application development. It is an extremely powerful, full-featured, rapid application development environment for building sophisticated browser-based applications.
For more information, click here to visit our Oracle Forms page or contact us directly.
