How to improve performance of Oracle Forms Server ?

Question

Recently we converted our Application which was Developed in Forms 5.0 and Reports 3.0 into Forms6i to host that on to Web. We also loaded ORACLE 9iAS (on Windows NT 4 with service pack 3) from "Enterprise Edition" option by selecting Oracle Database Cache, Forms Server and Reports Server, HTTP Server(on port 80),Oracle Web Cache. Everything loaded succesfully including Caches.
Forms server is working perfectly and we were able to run our Application in Browser, but performance is the issue. We thought the caches will improve the performance, but it seems they are not at all working. When we run a report or form the Database cache is not giving any statistics whether a particular Query is a Hit or Miss though the cache is running. We got a doubt and searched in FAQ's and we found the following questions.
Oracle9iAS Web Cache Frequently Asked
Questions February 2001
Does Oracle9iAS Web Cache work with applications that use Oracle9iAS Forms?
Not in the 1.x release of Oracle9iAS. Integration between Oracle9iAS Web Cache and Oracle9iAS Forms will be addressed at a future date.
Oracle9iAS Database Cache
Does the Cache work with Oracle Forms and Portal in Oracle9i AS?
Since Oracle Forms and Portal utilize read/write PL/SQL stored procedures, these components cannot take advantage of the Cache. This support is being considered for a future version.
After coming to know that Caches doesnot boost the performance of Oracle Forms and reports. We have the following queries.
1) Clarify whether the above are True.
2) Apart from DB and Web Cache is there any other way where in we can improve the performance of Oracle Forms and Reports in Forms Server including the start up time.
3) What is the ideal configuration required for each tier (iAS Server,Database Server and Client) to host Forms on to Web considering our application as Medium scale.
(Presently our configuration are,
Application Server Configuration : Windows NT 4 with service pack 3,256 MB RAM,1 GB Virtual memory and 4GB free space and almost the same configuration is being used for
Database Configuration.
Client Configuration : Windows 98 with 64MB RAM).
4) Is there any way to track the performance and know the problem areas like TRACE.
Gopi Kumar
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Answer 1

A couple of questions for you:
1) What version of IAS are you using?
2) What's the version of Forms&Reports and
3) What version of patch are you using if any
for forms&Reports?
4) What applications are you running on the
machine where Forms&Reports is installed?
(I mean non-Oracle applications?)
The problem could be that, the base addresses
of the DLL's in Forms&Reports could be having base address conflicts with some other application's DLL's.
Forms and Reports needs to be fully rebased to achieve full performance on NT. Before release of Forms and Reports, Oracle rebases all DLLs. Rebasing assigns unique base addresses to all of the DLL's in use by an executable. A properly based DLL will load at its preferred base address, greatly improving the efficiency of memory utilization and the runtime performance of the executable.
Multiple utilities are available on NT to verify proper rebasing of DLLs. HandleEx v4.0 is one such freeware from Sysinternals and is available at www.sysinternals.com. Some others are "depends.exe" that's part of the MS Visual Studio or msinfo32.exe that comes with Office 2000 on NT.
If after running any of these utilities you discover that the DLL's ar not properly rebased, you need to contact Oracle worldwide support.
If you find that rebasing is not the problem, then please post your feedback again. Hope this helps.