Doesn’t time fly!  While you might have been happily running your Forms 10g applications for about 5 years or so now, the end of premier support is creeping up and you need to start planning for a move to Oracle Forms 11g.

The premier support end date in December 31st 2011 and this is documented in Note: 1290974.1 available from MOS.

So how much of an impact is this going to be?  Maybe not as much as you think.  While Forms 11g is based on WebLogic Server (WLS),10g was based  on OC4J.  That in itself doesn’t impact Forms much.  In most case it will simply be a recompile of your Forms source files and redeploy on WLS 11g.

The Forms builder is the same in 11g as in 10g although its currently not available as a separate download from the main middleware bundle.  You can also look at a WLS Basic license option which means you shouldn’t have to shell out on upgrading to a WLS Suite license option.

So what’s the proof in this being a relatively straightforward upgrade?  Well, we’ve had a big uptake of Forms 11g already (which has itself been out for over 2 years).  Read about BT Expedite’s upgrade where “The upgrade of Forms from Oracle Forms 10g to Oracle Forms 11g was relatively simple and on the whole, was just a recompilation”.  Or AMEC where “This has been one of the easiest Forms conversions we’ve ever done and it
was a simple recompile in all cases”

So if you are on 10g (or even earlier versions) I’d strongly consider starting your planning for an upgrade to 11g now.

As always, if you have any questions about this you can post on the OTN forums.