FORMS/3-Migration
Starting situation
ISM has been using the forms generator Forms/3
since the beginning of the software development under the Oracle®
RDBMS. We think that the price-performance-ratio of this
product has been excellent. It allows rapid application development
in a very short time.
In about 1997 ORACLE officially discontinued
the support of the product, although still a large number of customers
have been using Forms/3 for program development.
ISM decided to provide a migration tool for
Forms/3 – programs to ISM*WebForms
and offer it as a stand-alone product.
Design objectives
Upon setting up the technical specifications for this product
the following considerations were taken care of:
- Migration of all Components of Forms/3
applications into the new environment for full support
of the new technology.
- Maintaining the full functionality of Forms/3
applications and guaranteeing the maximum security of the software
project hereby.
- Programmatic conversion of as many algorithms as possible.
1. Migration of all components of Forms/3-applications
In our migration process the Forms/3 code is
loaded completely into our own repository. The next step is an
extended analysis of the various components. The parts of the
screens which cannot be translated automatically are flagged.
These parts can be corrected manually by the programmer and checked
again for compliance.
2. Maintaining the functionality of Forms/3 applications
After an arbitrary number of modifications the programmer may
test the functionality of the modified Forms/3
program in the old environment. Additionally he may test the migrated
application with ISM*WebForms. In the course
of this process at least the „old“ application remains
functional until the modifications are correct and released officially
by the programmer.
3. Programmatic conversion of as many algorithms as possible
Our main objective is to provide Migration Assistants
for as many Forms/3 algorithms as possible. Yet
we cannot guarantee that these Migration Assistants
cover all special situations. Therefore it will be necessary to
make „manual“ modifications in the migration process.
Final result
As a final result the Forms/3 application will
still be functional and deliver the identical results as before.
Additionally, all algorithms will be translated successfully into
the ISM*WebForms environment.
