Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Naming Convention and Oracle Forms

I have been asked to create a test / dev environment to migrate Oracle Forms application from Forms 6i (Windows based) to Forms 10g on Linux box. There was about 30 files so whole operation looked very easy – just copy files and setup a Forms service.
I was really surprised when I test a main form – it didn’t start at all – just blank screen in browser.
I have compiled it and all related PL/SQL libraries once again in Forms Builder and there were no errors. So I decided to compile that same form and libraries on Linux box. Five from six libraries have been compiled without any errors but one has had an error message. Very strange for me – that other library has been not found. I have left it for a while and I was trying to compile form itself. This same kind of error appears – some of PL/SQL functions have not been found. But why ? There were PLX and PLL files with “missing” PL/SQL procedures and functions. I have used “strace” tool and I have compiled a forms again. In “strace” output file I have found references to missing files – OK not missing but with a little bit different names – “p” instead of “P”.
And this is a clue of this writing – developers didn’t use any naming convention for file names and links for that files – Windows is not case sensitive so if you call form “Form1” or “FORM1” this is still this same file – but not on case sensitive OS like Linux or other UNIX based systems. I have seen a lot of form which called other forms using not case sensitive names – don’t do that because in case of migration you will have a lot of additional work just to change forms names inside code.
Forms builder added his part too – if you attached a library it is using a file name as a reference to library and it is very important to keep file name case sensitive.

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