Forms 6i Environment Migration to Apex?

Question

Howdy All,
I appreciate the wealth of information in these forums!
I have a very complex form in the 6i environment that continually causes problems in an existing application.
I am tasked with determining a solution to break the complexity of the form into several forms, or somehow simplifying it. A desired solution would be to have some of the complication in the form translated somehow to data in tables that can be managed outside the form.
The form is usually a bottleneck in the development process, because so many pieces of the application are controlled through this one Form.
I have two questions:
1. Given the task, and today's advancements since 6i, what are the benefits to rewriting the form using APEX?
2. Would the APEX version be able to be implemented with the current application running in the 6i environment?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Answer 1

As Dimitri said, you 'should' be able to do this in Apex, especially if you are willing to redign the form in simpler modules.
But, as an old Forms person myself (ver. 2.3), there is a learning process as well. Depending on the in-house skills and knowledge of PL/SQL, HTML, css and javascript, it could take around 6 months to get a very complex app ported over to Apex for your first Apex application (assuming the first thing you are doing is the most complex app). However, after this, your skills and development time will have dropped drastically.
I'd suggest installing Apex on a machine in your organization (if you are using Forms, you probably already have OAS setup as well). Create the DAD for Apex, and begin experimenting. Download a couple of the pre-packaged applications, play around with them, try creating your own sample app, based on a simpler application in your organization. When you get stumped, take a peek at how the pre-packaged apps work or ask questions here. After a month or two you'll begin to have an idea of what you can and can't do 'simply' in Apex. There's plenty more you can do with javascript, especially with AJAX functionality, but that's a steeper learning curve if there is no in-house expertise already.
So, you probably can convert your Forms app into Apex with some redesign. How easy it is and the timeframe involved to do it will depend a lot on the in-house expertise, but the forum is a great resource when you get stuck. Another alternative may be to hire somebody to do the complicated application for you, then for all of your other apps, take a peek at how the complicated application was put together.
Answering your questions,
1.) Forms 6i is more difficult to maintain (it's also desupported isn't it?) and Apex is free. With Oracle 11i, it's even part of the 'official' database. Apex also isn't isn't as 'proprietary' as Forms either. Most of the skills you use in Apex can be easily used in other web technologies as well, especially Oracle related ones (for the PL/SQL end of it). Javascript, HTML, css formatting, etc. can be used across a multitude of different web apps, not just Apex.
2.) Apex and Forms can run together in the same environment, so that shouldn't be an issue while you experiment to determine capabilities.
Hope this helps some,
Bill Ferguson