The Dichotomy of Oracle Forms and APEX

We live in a dichotomic world. It's always Heads or Tails? Left or Right? In or Out? So, isn't it refreshing to know that when it comes to Oracle Forms and Oracle APEX, the proper choice may just be....both.

I'm reminded of a presentation Insum's own, Francis Mignault, delivered a few years back at KScope. The session was titled "Oracle Forms and Oracle APEX - The Odd Couple". In it he did a great job laying out the entire gambit of options a Forms customer has. Everything from simply maintaining the status quo and continuing to support your on-premise Forms, to moving things to the Oracle Cloud, to extending Oracle Forms with APEX and finally rewriting everything in APEX thereby eliminating Forms completely. Today, I'm focused on the co-existence of Oracle Forms and APEX and why this odd couple, may not be so odd after all.

Here are three scenarios in which extending Forms with APEX makes great sense.

Upgrading the Presentation Layer
A common pain point of Forms is the look and feel. You could even say Forms has a face for radio.  Now that's fine for internal back office applications but for customer facing apps, expectations have never been higher. Users are demanding the same bells and whistles they enjoy on other websites. 

Providing Mobility 
A few years ago, the talk was "Mobile First" meaning applications should be developed with mobile functionality "top of mind". Although that talk has cooled a bit, if a mobile experience is needed say for field operations, Forms layouts will be too rigid and inflexible. A responsive layout using APEX is the answer.

Scratch, Dinero, Moolah
I'm always going to encourage customers to stay current and to stay within vendor support. The reality is sometimes companies decide against it for economic reasons. For example, upgrading to Forms 12c requires WebLogic Server. The increase in cost is significant. These companies are using APEX to deliver new functionality.


So there's no reason for Felix to kick Oscar out. Clearly they're better together. The same could be said for a different odd couple - Oracle Forms and Oracle APEX. They, too, are better together.

I'd encourage checking out Francis' original presentation here.


...our journey continues