Article : Installing Forms 11g on our Oracle tools competence knowledge day

Installing Forms 11g on our Oracle tools competence knowledge day

The session began with the discussion of chapter 9 of Tom Kyte’s book Expert Oracle Database Architecture. The subject of the chapter was undo and redo. Tom explained what undo and redo is and what impact it has, not only for DBA’s but also for developers. Committing data, for example, is quite different from what most developers think it is – saving data. The actual saving of the data already happens by the undo and redo mechanisms. That is the reason why developers shouldn’t use commit that often in their code.

After that it was time for the topic of the day. This time we wanted to discuss the new features of Forms 11g. We gave ourselves some homework in the form of installing Forms 11g. That appeared to be a very difficult step, as no one could show a working Forms 11g environment.

Nowadays, Forms is part of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11.1.1.2.0 and to run a form, you need to have the Oracle Weblogic server. So, before installing Oracle Fusion, you should first install Oracle Weblogic. Additionally, if you want to install Oracle Portal or Oracle Discoverer (also part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware), you also need to setup Repository Configuration Utility prior to installing Oracle Fusion Middleware. We tested the installation of just Forms and Reports, including the Oracle Weblogic server and that took 75 minutes on a Dell with an Intel Core Duo T7500 2.2 Ghz. with 4 Megabytes of memory. Below are the steps we took to get a working Forms 11g environment. Oracle Fusion can be downloaded via otn.oracle.com and takes 4 cd’s (files). The Oracle Weblogic and RCU can also be downloaded via otn.oracle.com. You need approximately 3 Gigabytes to install Oracle Weblogic and Oracle Fusion Middleware Forms and Reports.

After unpacking, start setup.exe which you can find on disk1. The universal installer is started. Select install and configure.

The Select Installation Type Dialog

On the select domain screen, enter the weblogic user and password.

The Select Domain Dialog

On the specify security updates screen, enter your email address and your Oracle support password to receive security updates. If you leave the fields empty, you will not be notified for security updates but you can continue with the installation.

Specifying Security Updates

Next, specify the locations. The fields already contain a suggestion which was sufficient in our situation. After that, you can select which components you want to install. Do not forget to check Oracle Forms and Reports builder which can be found under the development tools.

Configuring Components

On the next pages you can select which ports to configure (select auto port configuration), use proxy settings and use application level identity store. Click on install. The installation will take a while.

Installing... just wait

After the installation, all components will be configured which will also take a while but after that you’re almost there. Just edit the tnsnames.ora which you can find in the ORA_HOME\Middleware\asinst_x\config directory. To start Forms Builder, there is a start menu item under Oracle classic instance-asinst_x – developer tools – Forms builder. In Forms builder, you can set your application server url. Select Edit – preferences and then the runtime tab. In the textfield Application server url, enter the url which was specified by the installer.

Running a Form