Customers running Forms over Internet (WAN)

Question

I am looking for customers running forms over internet (wan). I read the the customer's testimonials at http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ids/customers/index.html but
I didn't find any case about running forms application over internet.

Answer 1

Aviana,
Running a Forms application over the internet can be done, but there are a few things you need to consider before you do this. First, all of your users MUST be on High Speed. As Francios eluded to, Forms applications are Java Applets. Therefore, each person using the application will receive all of the Java Archive (.jar) files used by your program in order for it to run on their computer. Each time a user runs your application, the application will either download the initial set of .jar files or it must validate the .jar files that were previously downloaded to ensure they are current. This can be extreamly slow over dial-up and even on High-Speed line that are less than 256 kbps. Additionally, a user must either have the Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed our they will need to have Oracle's Jinitiator installed. Past experience showed this was a major trouble spot for Dial-up users.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is make sure there are no better alternatives before going down this path. I worked on an application like this because management thought it was the cheaper way to accomplish what was needed. Four years later, after a lot of user complaints and a lot of time was spent supporting users, the application was rewritten from the ground up as a pure web app because it became too much to support and there were too many user complaints.
Just a thought. :-)
Craig...