We've inherited a large Oracle project that was originally Oracle 9 and is now Oracle 11.
We don't have much confidence in the Forms change register.
Are there any tools we could use to compare the two Forms projects?
(By virtue of the fact that two different versions of Forms are involved, there will be differences even though the underlying code hasn't changed).
No answers yet but doing some research:
Caffo Forms Diff which is free
Forms Tool 30 days free trial with some restrictions
Convert FMB (binary file) to FMT (text file). From the form, choose menu *File/Administration/Convert/Binary_to_text*, This generates "source code" which can be compared with a normal text compare tool e.g. diff / Beyond Compare etc. But then you have to do each form individually and we have lots of forms!
Anyone used any of these? Any recommendations? Other tools / better way?
Update: Beyond Compare also has a compare facility. Refer here.
The general consensus of the Oracle Tools Developers Users Group is that the ORCL Toolbox FormsTool diff ability is the best and brightest. Well worth the cost of a license if you have a diff need for form.
The problem with the FMB->FMT is that the queries in the forms are converted to a binary format which is unreadable by humans.
Forms version 10 has an ability to convert FMB to XML files, assuming you can read the XML files and do diffs.
Don't assume that just because you are using two versions of forms, the the underlying FMB files need to change. I've taken FMB files for Forms 4.5, and run them through the compiler for the Forms 4.5, 6i and 9i and gotten all of them to work just fine.
Which versions of Forms are you using?