Case Study - Government of South Australia Upgrades 700 Oracle Forms
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Customer Overview
The Department of Administrative & Information Services (2006), Building Management division, part of the Government of South Australia Department of Transport, Energy and Infrastructure (DTEI). DTEI has diverse responsibilities in relation to transport systems and services, energy policy and regulation, and infrastructure planning for South Australia. DTEI activities contribute significantly to South Australia’s Strategic Plan.
The Building Management division of DTEI provides building related services to other government agencies, who are their customers. Together, the division and its customers provide solutions for public buildings that deliver benefits to individuals, families, and communities.
Challenge
Unify | CipherSoft was contracted to upgrade over 700 Forms and 150 Menus to Oracle Forms 6. The project involved the migration of Oracle Forms 3 and Oracle Menu v5 (both CHARACTER MODE) to Oracle Forms v6 (CHARACTER MODE). The existing functionality of the applications was to be retained. The applications at the time of the upgrade were 17 years old and originated as Oracle Forms v2 and Oracle Menu v4 in-house developed applications.
The department had a business requirement to upgrade the existing Forms to Forms 6. There were four in-house developed Forms applications to be converted. The upgrade project was part of a server platform change that was being implemented.
Solution
After researching various options to carry out the migration, the Government of South Australia chose to use Unify | Ciphersoft’s in-house Forms upgrade service. The client was offered a fixed price project, with minimal downtime and a relatively short project duration. Unlike alternatives, Unify | Ciphersoft’s solution did not require proprietary software, on-going support or assistance with the environment configuration.
The department selected one application as a pilot. The client provided Unify | CipherSoft with the Forms 3 .INP files, which were returned to the client as Forms 6 .fmb files. Unify | CipherSoft completed the conversion and the client reviewed the returned forms. A copy of the client’s database structure (via an Oracle export file) was provided to Unify | CipherSoft and enabled Unify | CipherSoft to recreate the database and compile the forms remotely. All file transfers were done via FTP.
In total, the project took five months, including the pilot and testing. Issues of resourcing and testing with the client delayed the completion, however, the final migrated system went live five months later.
The pilot migration did not identify major across the board changes that would later be required. Most of the obstacles were related to the difference in behavior between Oracle Forms 3 and Forms 6 within the character mode setting. A Form in Forms 6 GUI would function fine, but when the Form ran in Forms 6 character mode, the behavior would be different. Upon receipt of the upgraded Forms from Unify | CipherSoft, the client developers had to ensure that the functionality was maintained for the environment. Any across the board changes required were identified and passed back to Unify | CipherSoft for rework, and the rework were undertaken by Unify | CipherSoft in a timely manner.
There was one behavior issue that could not be resolved easily. Unify | CipherSoft willingly liased with Oracle Support on the issue, which was thought to be related to a patch to the client’s Oracle Forms environment. However, as the software was un-supported by Oracle, a re-release of the patch was not available. So the developers reviewed the situation and were able to rewrite that part of the application code.
Returned Forms for the application were reviewed and issues were addressed with Unify | CipherSoft. The Unify | CipherSoft team reworked the conversion process by incorporating modifications for the issues and redid the conversion for that application to ensure all Forms were converted in the same manner. This provided the basis for the conversion of the remaining applications. There were additional issues related to a difference in behavior between Oracle Forms 3 and Forms 6, which required manual modification of the Forms on the client’s end.
This Forms conversion work was just one part of the client’s overall server migration project.
Results
The Oracle Forms migration project was delivered. The client’s project metrics were all achieved.
Client Reference
- Gavin Edwards
Application Support DBA
Department of Treasury and Finance
Government of Australia
