The Client

The client’s “College Applications System” – located in Guelph, Ontario,provides administrative systems and application processing services and acts as the central clearing house for applications and acceptances to Ontario’s 25 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology, the three Agricultural Colleges and the Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences. The client is seeking Oracle Forms Migration to a Java based solution.

The Intent

To improve their service scope and to have a Web based Online Application System enabling the students to login from anywhere and submit their application through Web.

The Scenario

The client developed an Online Application Processing system, Secondary School Online Application (SSOLA), using Oracle Forms 6i as the front end, Oracle 8i as the database and deployed on Web using Oracle 9iAS as Application Server.

The applications developed using Oracle Forms and deployed on Web, will be loaded as Applets in browsers. This causes more time for initial loading. Otherwise it requires Oracle JInitiator, a plug-in provided by Oracle to make the initial loading faster.

The target end users of the system are the student community spread across the territory and many of them have low configuration computers and slow internet connection.

Hence it was practically not possible for the client to request students to download and install JInitiator as that itself takes more time and not of use for any other purpose.

This made the system less feasible to meet their business requirement and let the client to rethink on alternate solutions.

The Solution

Kumaran analyzed and suggested the client to migrate the Oracle Forms application to thin client, Java based solution. Kumaran migrated the Oracle Forms application using Servlets, HTML and Javascript, retaining the database in Oracle 8i and Oracle 9iAS as the Application Server.

All the business logic that was built in the Forms application is implemented in the Java application. The server side interactions are handled in Servlets and Client side scripts are written in HTML and Javascript. The middle tier and database tier is kept intact, as 9iAS has the capability of deploying J2EE applications.

Kumaran used the Forms to Java Migration tools for completing the migration. With Migration tools, the conversion time is reduced by 80%. The system migrated can work with various browsers like IE and Netscape.

The Benefits

– Faster access
– Support for a wide range of Browsers
– Reusable Components
– Security
– Platform Independence
– Increased efficiency & reduced overheads
– Database Independence
– Reduced time and cost in application processing
– Online Fee payment
– Options to the students to view the history of their application processing

Conclusion

The new system was introduced in the next year’s application cycle and was well received by the end users. The client is hoping to get many more students to use this system in the years to come.

The project though challenging was completed on time by Kumaran systems. Our deep understanding of the domain and technologies matched with a comprehensive solution and project management ensured the deadlines were met on time. This was among the first Oracle Forms to Java migration projects that the team executed.