Modernizing Oracle Forms Using Oracle

APEX

Toufiq Mohammed
Senior Product Manager
Oracle APEX
November 26, 2023
Agenda

1. Oracle Forms Review

2. Should you Modernize?
3. Key Reasons to Modernize
4. Similarities, Differences and Advantages
5. Considerations and Modernizations Steps
• Practicing a Modernization
6. Success Stories
7. Useful Links

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Oracle Forms Review

3 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]

Oracle Forms Issues

• Browser support (can utilize Java Web Start)

• Best suited for heavy-duty, back-office applications

• Can integrate with desktop tools

• Highly productive for “Power Users”

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Oracle Forms Current Standing

• Very stable product, still being developed

• Non-responsive = Not suitable for mobile devices

• Difficult to find skilled Oracle Form developers

• Often hard-to-use, non-intuitive runtime user experience

• Takes significant time for end users to become productive

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Should you Modernize?

Are you on Can you

a easily
supported upgrade?
version? No No

Yes Modernize Forms

Yes Using APEX

Is Forms Are they net

meeting all new
requirement requirements
s? No ? No

Yes Yes

Stay on Oracle Keep Oracle Forms

Forms +
Build new apps in
APEX
6 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]
Key Reasons to Modernize

• Need modern, responsive user interface running on any device

• Need solution for external use (such as customers / partners)

• Need simplified UX as extending to corporate-wide

• Major functionality needs to be redeveloped

• Unable to maintain / enhance existing Forms apps

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 Oracle APEX
The Best “Proven” Alternative

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Oracle APEX Similarities

• Primarily code in SQL and PL/SQL

• Database-centric development

• Low-code, declarative platform

• Can very easily integrate Oracle packages, functions, procedures

• Can fully utilize Oracle Database features

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Oracle APEX Differences

Oracle Forms Oracle APEX

Requires full WebLogic Server Requires Oracle REST Data Services

Requires browser plug-ins or Java Web Start Any modern web browser

Generates files Metadata based

Runs on any device (zero development

Suitable for desktops only
effort)

Difficult to style Out of the box theming and theme styles

10 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]

Oracle APEX Advantages

• No additional licensing cost

• Easy to train Forms Developers as key similarities

• Re-use all existing Database objects

• Can readily co-exist with Oracle Forms

• Flexibility in platform for development / deployment

• Rapid, low-code, beautiful, intuitive, responsive app dev

• APEX Community and Partners

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Considerations
Upfront Planning

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Key Points

• Modernization is non-trivial

• Requires significant investment in time and resources

• New apps should be modern and intuitive not mimic Forms

• The new APEX applications will look and behave differently

• Should modernize business processes not just screens

13 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]

Before you Start

• Push as much business logic into the Database as possible

• Identify a suitable functional area as Proof-of-Concept

• Review how APEX Consulting Companies may add value

• Train developers in APEX

• Secure SMEs for functional input and reviews

14 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]

Challenges

• Availability of Forms developers who know the functionality

• Getting buy-in from existing “Power Users”

• Managing scope creep

• Ensuring new apps implement appropriate business rules

• Agreeing on new application look and feel

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 Modernization
Steps
How to Move to Oracle APEX

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Overall Strategy

• Provision your APEX Service or Install APEX into your local Oracle Database

• Know the important business logic

• Create APEX application(s)

1. Use Create App Wizard for “First-Cut”

2. Enhance pages based on requirements

3. Use Create Page Wizard to add additional pages

4. Review with key stakeholders

5. Iterate and repeat from step 2

17 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]

Practicing a Modernization

Modernizing an Oracle Forms Application to an Oracle APEX App

1. Creating a workspace

2. Creating the APEX app

3. Customizing the APEX app – Customers Form

4. Customizing the APEX app – Orders Form

5. The last enhancements

apex.oracle.com/go/forms2apex-blog

18 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]

Practicing a Modernization
Alternatives for Customers Form in
APEX:
• Faceted Search
• Interactive Report
• Tree

Alternatives for Orders Form in

APEX:
• Master Detail
• Stacked
• Side by Side
• Drill Down
• Faceted Search Page

19 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]

Practicing a Modernization

Orders Form

apex.oracle.com/go/forms2apex-app
20 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]
Is there any recommended migration tool?

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Can a migration be done in phases and how to handle
embedding APEX in Forms, and Forms in APEX?

22 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]

Is this the only option for Forms, what about Reports?

23 Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]

 Success Stories

24 Copyright © 2021, Oracle and/or its affiliates [Date]

 Business Challenge:
Novatech undertook a modernization of their IT systems, which
included upgrading their primary enterprise application, a version of
E-Business Suite (EBS) dating back to the early 2000s that made
Novatech modernizes adding new functionality and business processes difficult.

manufacturing processes with Novatech also wanted to do away with manual spreadsheet updates
and the risks of human error during the lists’ approvals and
Oracle APEX renewals.

Results:
Novatech updates its EBS apps with the low-code development
framework, APEX, to increase data security and reduce costs.

“With Oracle APEX, we dramatically The company was provided with better exposure to single-
sourced data from E-Business Suite (EBS), enabling management
improved our ability to develop new apps to react faster and increase manufacturing production efficiency
and reporting to help our manufacturing APEX helped to spark an accelerated evolution of business
processes and created a renewed enthusiasm among end users
business react faster to the market and to for the improved functionality
our customers. We’ve increased data Cut development time in half by replacing Forms apps
security and productivity. The Oracle team
is easily reachable and responsive, which Products Used:
has reinforced our confidence.” Oracle Database
Oracle APEX
Mick Morin
IT Manager, Groupe Novatech Inc.
Read story
Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates
 Business Challenge:
Oracle Forms no longer gave Humanic the ability to provide
customers with a robust, enterprise-level payroll solution. The
company needed a new development platform that would give
Humanic significantly improves customers a modern user interface and the highest level of security.
Humanic also wanted to reuse its proven payroll application code
the customer experience using and reduce the effort to bring new applications to market.

Oracle APEX
Results:
Migrating from Oracle Forms to Oracle APEX allowed Humanic
teams to enhance the Humanic Payroll solution while reducing
development time by 35%.
“The customer experience is a top priority
In addition, Oracle APEX and Oracle Database provided the
for us. We want to create applications that functionality Humanic developers needed without the traditional
trade-off of time-consuming data integrations.
users will enjoy using. APEX allows us to
The team also redesigned its security and menu system,
achieve that while maximizing developer migrated 200 tables in the Discoverer environment to Oracle
efficiency.” Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, migrated 1,000 forms to
APEX, and went live with its first client.
Bradley Toland
Products Used:
President, Humanic
Oracle Database
Oracle APEX

Read story
Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates
 Business Challenge:
Telstra, an international telecommunications and media company,
has built Australia’s largest and most reliable mobile network. The
Telecom giant Telstra company discovered that internal applications built using Microsoft
Access were clogging network bandwidth due to the chattiness of
empowers citizen Forms.

developers with Oracle Telstra saved big by consolidating these internal apps and replacing
them. A community platform called Telstra APEX Central comprises
APEX an Oracle Application Server and a three-node Oracle RAC database.
The company turned 3,000 Microsoft Access databases, costing
AUD$15,000 per compute instance to run, into a two-instance Oracle
APEX deployment—shaving AUD$51 million off Telstra’s data center
Results:
costs.
Not only did APEX save tens of millions in IT costs, it enabled
“If it weren’t for Oracle APEX, it would have employees to easily create and spin up their own internal APEX
apps for such things as customer satisfaction and data, pay phone
taken $1 to $2 million to recreate this using orders, and IT environment provisioning.
another solution.” Telstra continues to reduce maintenance costs by consolidating
and moving new applications onto Telstra APEX Central.
Tony Kirn DBTECH is another large internal tool, running 20 to 30
applications for a mix of IT and business users on a single APEX
Team Engineer Senior Lead
workspace. But that’s not all: On APEX Central platform, Telstra’s
citizen developers are able to create their own solutions quickly,
without having to make a formal IT request for provisioning or
custom coding.
Products Used:
Oracle Database
Oracle APEX

Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates Read story

 Business Challenge:
Based in Gujarat, India, the IT company, the Soham ERP Solutions offers
several products for its 2,000-plus customers, ranging from ERPs to
salesforce automation systems to barcode tools. As the pharmaceutical
industry grew, Soham ERP’s customers expected improvements in software
functionality, experience, and efficiency. Additionally, customers who had
adopted the company’s on-premises software wanted help with growth
challenges, such as costs associated with server upgrades, database
licenses, and investments in IT staff to manage on-premises infrastructure.

Soham ERP builds new app The company decided to migrate to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and
low code platform, APEX, paving the way for a more modern approach to

using Oracle Cloud application development. However, the decision to choose Oracle was not a
foregone conclusion.

Results:
Soham ERP was able to develop a new application, PharmaCloud, using
“Our more than 100 enterprise customers Oracle APEX with Oracle Database Cloud Service on Oracle Cloud
are thrilled with the performance of OCI. Infrastructure. PharmaCloud supports about 100 of Soham’s customers,
equivalent to roughly 1,200 concurrent users.
With Oracle APEX and Database Cloud Before the transition to the cloud, customers would need to invest about
Service, we have faster time to market to $100,000 for on-premises hardware, licensing, and maintenance. Now, that
initial cost has dropped to about $20,000, which better aligns costs with
build and deploy plus data security. And benefits.

Oracle Consulting helped us seamlessly Thanks to OCI, Soham has seen a 25% improvement in application
performance—leading to faster turnaround time for complex processes—
convert our existing forms and reports and while reducing costs by 40%. Plus, customers can access PharmaCloud
from anywhere in the world, from any device.
trained our current staff.”
Products Used:
Suketu Shah Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Oracle Database
Director, Soham ERP Solutions Oracle APEX
Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates Read story
 Business Challenge:
REACH was using Oracle Forms to develop and run a core business
application that managed a range of internal business processes and
financial operations. But managing data and interactions via Oracle
Forms had limitations, so the team was looking for alternatives with
greater capabilities. As an added complication, REACH depended on a

REACH cuts IT overhead by third-party vendor to manage what was a technically complex
environment. The in-house software team of REACH had very little

30% with Oracle Autonomous control over the production environment, leading to added
administrative costs for systems upgrades and monitoring.

Database and APEX REACH needed to move to a new IT environment that provided greater
scalability, more in-house control, faster turnaround on new initiatives,
and enterprise grade security.
Results:
REACH has reduced IT operating costs by 30% by migrating to
“By migrating our core business systems to Oracle APEX, using Oracle Autonomous Database for transaction
processing on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Oracle Autonomous Database, we have REACH can now more quickly and cost-effectively develop and
eliminated dependency on a third-party deploy applications.

service provider, taken control in-house, The Oracle Cloud Lift Services team worked with the REACH
team to assist in migrating their database and applications to
and reduced operational costs by 30%.” OCI in just two weeks.
The Lift Services team also helped REACH set up an OCI tenancy,
Alexey Novikov all the virtual networking, Autonomous Database for transaction
Head of Software Development, REACH processing, and Oracle APEX.

Products Used:
Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing
Oracle APEX

Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates

Read story
 Business Challenge:
King Hamad University Hospital offers national healthcare for all
residents of Bahrain, an Arabian Gulf island nation, with more than
40 specialties. The core healthcare information system, HOPE
King Hamad University (Healthcare Operating Environment), spans every aspect of the
healthcare system, from scheduling, admissions, electronic medical
Hospital accelerates records, lab testing, specialty care, pharmacy, catering, and revenue
management, among other patient and staff services.
application development and
Results:
saves costs
Modernized its operating environment using Oracle APEX by
creating one large application that spans a suite of more than 40
modules

“HOPE has a clear and profound positive impact on the way The hospital app serves 5,000 users, including all physicians and
the hospital operates. It streamlines hundreds of business staff and handles 4 to 5 million hits per day and 8,000 to 10,000
sessions per day without capacity issues
processes across the organization. HOPE is powered by
Oracle APEX, which offers unparalleled speed, integration,
and security. We now have the agility to rapidly build and
evolve our hospital information system in record time on Products Used:
minimal infrastructure, and to provide excellent healthcare Oracle Database
more efficiently. Oracle APEX has no competition.” Oracle APEX

Dr. Mohamed Helal

HOPE Architect and Lead Designer, Head of Hospital Information
Systems, King Hamad University Hospital

Read story
Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates
Useful Links

Primary site apex.oracle.com

Modernizing Oracle Forms apex.oracle.com/go/Forms2APEX
APEX Shortcuts apex.oracle.com/shortcuts
Blog blogs.oracle.com/apex
Tutorials blogs.oracle.com/hols
Docs blogs.oracle.com/doc222
Download blogs.oracle.com/otn

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Thank you
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