Presentations

1
Northgate Revenues and Benefits Forms migration
to APEX
22nd March 2011
2
Introductions

• Tony Andrews Independent Apex Developer
• Nigel Blair Product Director Northgate Public
  Services

3
Why we did it Nigel Blair
4
Late 2004
Results.
5
.......how we got there
6
Ambitions - Technology

• Move from Oracle Forms in Browser to pure HTML
  Front End
• Fully Transactional Web Site
• Same model as Amazon, eBay, Tesco
• Builds on iWorld Project
• Improvements in Accessibility
• W3C Level 1 (possibly level 2)
• Any Browser Features
• Skinnable / Style Sheets
• Colors / Large Print / Proportional Resizing/
  Text Only
• Light / Quick
• Can run alongside existing UI during phased
  migration

7
Ambitions Presentation (Enquiry)

• Faster Enquiries
• User Friendly
• Technical Jargon Free
• Business Focussed
• User Driven
• Liaise / Consult with End Users
• Learn from previous roll-outs
• Look at weak areas
• Flatter Presentation of Data
• Quicker Access to Data
• Quicker Link to Update

8
Ambitions Performance (Update)

• Quicker
• Speed of Response
• Less Clicks
• Multiple Update of data
• Enquire / Create / Update
• Multi Row
• Benchmark Existing Application
• Address Weak Areas
• More Organic Approach
• Improved Service / Productivity
• Improved Quality
• Integrated Workflow / Scheduler

9
Timeline
October 2005 Launch Of Prototype at IRRV
Conference November 2005 V6 Prototype Installed
On Customer Portal December 2005 Management
Board Sanctions Version 6 V6 Development
Commences Jan - May 2006 Development
Continues Consultation Continues User Group
Executive Approve Roll-out
10
Timeline
May July 2006 Recruitment Of 6 Beta Sites Beta
Programme Commences V6 Beta Release July
2006 December 2006 First Production Release of
V6 December 2008 All forms and processes
available in V6 Announced De-support of V5 from
December 2009 December 2009 First All-V6
Release All customers live on Version 6 Only
11
Version 6 today!
ACTIONS Gives quick access to the actions
(updates etc.) associated with the current page.
LINKS User-defined links to other applications,
internal and external web sites (e.g. DWP)
KEY DETAILS Shows the user the main details and
current status of the item in context (Account,
Property, Claim etc etc)
TABS Quick Access to all main work Areas through
use of Tabs
CONTEXT BLOCK Holds the main details of the item
in context (Applicant, Task)
REGIONS Breaks information down into clearly
defined regions
12
Outcomes.......
13
Outcomes.......
Central Government Opportunities
Improved Performance
International Opportunities
14
How to migrate 1500 Forms to Apex Tony Andrews
15
Tony Andrews

• UK-based Oracle developer for 20 years
• User of Apex since Project Marvel
• Developer at Northgate 2002-2010
• Active on
• tonyandrews.blogspot.com
• stackoverflow.com
• forums.oracle.com

16
Aims

• Update of 1500-module Forms application
• Preserve large existing database
• Preserve large existing code base
• Preserve large existing body of role-based
  security and navigation metadata
• Use 20 developers who know Forms, PL/SQL and the
  application (but don't know HTML, CSS, Javascript)

17
Concerns

• Will Apex scale?
• Is Apex robust enough for a serious product?
• Is Apex good for developers?
• Why not Java?!

18
Challenges

• Migrate 1500 forms quickly, consistently and
  correctly
• Some Apex built-in features not useful
• Form region
• Tabular form region
• Tabs
• Validations
• Requirements for Rich UI
• Management of large Apex project

19
Rich UI

• Reports with overflow area
• Tabular forms over APIs
• Dynamic hide/show, enable/disable, validation and
  population of items
• In other words, Dynamic Actions!
• Configurable item, region and report column
  labels

20
Report with Overflow
21
Report with Overflow
22
Report with Overflow
23
Tabular Form
24
Tabular Form
25
Tabular Form
26
Tabular Form
27
Tabular Form
28
Tabular Form
29
Dynamic Actions
Defined via data in tables
Applied automatically via page 0 region (no
developer code)
30
Rich UI

• Report overflows, tabular forms, dynamic
  actions etc. all defined declaratively via data
• This data needs to be maintained by the
  developer, and deployed via version control
• Creating all this data via SQL Plus scripts or
  Toad (or SQL Developer) is tiresome
• Q What can we do to make the developer's life
  easier?

31
Rich UI
A Give them an Apex application to maintain the
data, with a facility to download all data for a
page as a SQL script ready for deployment.
32
Reuse Legacy

• Forms module definitions in Oracle Designer
• Generate first-cut Apex pages and our metadata
  from these
• Security/navigation data
• Render navigation tabs from this
• Base page authorisation scheme on this
• Business Logic APIs
• Generate first-cut code to map Apex page to API

33
Apex Page Generator
34
Consistency (Quality)

• Build Standards
• Generator
• Skeleton pages to copy
• Reports to check Apex pages for adherence to
  standards

35
Manageability

• Many small applications
• One per logical business area
• Between 5 and 50 pages per app
• Assign applications to development teams
• Version control export files (app or page)
• Version control our metadata
• Master Application
• Common Components, published to other apps
• Templates, Authorisation and authentication
  schemes
• Shortcuts, Application processes

36
Apex Resources

• Apex on OTN
• Apex Forum
• Apex Blogs
• Apex Development Team

37
Outcome

• Successful replacement system
• Satisfied customers
• Productive and satisfied developers
• A foundation for developing future applications
• well, mostly!

38
Conclusions

• Can Apex be used for large projects?
• Is it a good idea?
• Would we do it again?

39
Conclusions

• Can Apex be used for large projects? Yes
• Is it a good idea? Yes
• Would we do it again? Yes and we have