Webutil and support issues

Question

Hi,
1: "Pick a forum", a game for young and old.
I haven't posted here before because I've traditionally used the Metalink Forms forum. On failing to get problems resolved there, I've occasionally escalated by raising a TAR. A recent TAR concerned Webutil so I was phoned by a very friendly Support analyst who told me they couldn't help (webutil's still beta), and I should post my comments (see below) here in the 'discussion' forum, because "the product managers read them".
Are the Metalink forums and Discussion forums related in any way? If not why not, and how do I search for help efficiently? (It's only databases, right?) Which forum gives me a better chance of an authoritative answer?
2: It would be very useful to be able to write blob data to the App Server. Are there any plans to provide "webutil_file_transfer.db_to_AS"? If so, good, when? If not why not?
3: Webutil support (TAR extract):
I think Oracle ... has made a mess. We're encouraged to go Forms 9i because client-server is dying, and must not only pay heavily for the privilege but find once we're there that:
a) forms plus webutil cannot do everything 6i could. YOUR APP MAY NO LONGER WORK.
b) not all webutil calls work - yet (e.g. delete_file - awaiting a fix at 1.0.3, whenever that's due)
c) webutil is not supported at 9i
d) the webutil documentation (webutil_manual.pdf) is substandard - the only way to deduce details of the (misnamed) procedures is to examine the pll directly and guess how to use them.
e) the only support is via Metalink, and the only response you get there is 'you can use webutil, read the documentation'. Loop to a).
You could save your users a lot of time (=money) and grief by sticking something similar to the following in all relevant documentation (and passing it on to the Metalink folk):
Webutil limitations:
1) Webutil cannot be used to read or write BLOB data directly.
2) To open a BLOB in an application, you must use webutil's file transfer functions to download to the client (NB NOT the App Server), then use e.g.
web.show_document(<filename>?mimetype=<whatever>)
3) To edit a BLOB, the user must download it, make changes then manually
re-upload.
Finally I'd like to second some comments in other posts about the webutil file_select and file_open dialogs: they confuse users by behaving in a non-Windows manner, and in my experience are unusably slow when exploring large folders.
All responses most welcome.
JD

Answer 1

Thank you for your comments- maybe I can address your concerns.
As is stated in the webutil FAQ - webutil "[webutil] is delivered as a preview release and as such is not yet a fully integrated and supported feature of Oracle9i Forms. However, help is provided by the use of the Forms forum."
So, this is correct forum on which to be posting your webutil question.
With respect to your second question about moving blob data to the application server - this is not really within the realms of what webutil is targetting since the need to write data from the database to where the Forms runtime is running is the exact same when running client/server or running on the web.... webutil tends to target those differences in moving to a 3 tier architecture.
a) There are some difference in architecture between c/s and web and as such there are some limitations. These have been well documented and workarounds indicated.
b) I assume you refer to bug:<Bug:3151674> which is fixed and in the production candidate release which is documented in the webutil FAQ when this will be released.
c) Correct - it will be formally supported in 10g - please note however that for Forms 10g is regarded as a minor release to 9i (so you gain many benefits for a minor release change)
d) Please feel free to post specific comments and we can address these (the misnamed procedure has been fixed).
e) Until production, support is through the forum.
Regarding the file selection - while you are running on a windows machine you must be aware that the client is actually running in a JVM and so is essentially a Java client. There has been an enhancement request to make this a windows specific dialog.
Could I also draw your attention to http://otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/04-mar/o24news.html which documents the great benefit that webutil has brought to a particular development.
Regards
Grant Ronald
Forms Product Management