FAQ

Over past few months, we have received quite a few questions about InPowerForms. Below is just a sampled list. More will be coming. Please check back frequently.

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nswers

What is InPowerForms?
InPowerForms is a rich-client development platform that provides the best of Oracle Forms-like functionality, but is implemented in Java Swing/Oracle ADF and Java Eclipse RCP/JBoss Hibernate. InPowerForms provides an appropriate level of abstraction such that any database-driven application can be developed in a fraction of time compared to using any technology stack currently available. InPowerForms is also database neutral. Top

What are the business benefits of using InPowerForms?
The most critical benefits that InPowerForms provides are increased speed, reliability, and robustness for developing database-driven applications. InPowerForms saves developers the traditional tedious and error-prone process of wiring Java UI components to JDBC works. Another huge benefit is the cost savings. InPowerForms can increase developer productivity by at least 2 to 4 times and therefore preclude the need to outsource development to a different country seeking cheaper labor at the expenses of poor manageability and business intelligence exposure. Top

Why are you doing rich client instead of Web applications?
Although web applications are effective for serving information to a large number of customers over the Internet, they are more tedious to develop and maintain than most rich-client platforms. After more than five years of widespread ASP/JSP application development, many developers started to re-evaluate the applicability of web applications, particular those behind a corporate firewall. However, rich-client application development has gained popularity and is expected to reclaim a balanced proportion for all enterprise applications in the future. Rich-client development not only reduces the cost and complexity of development and maintenance over the life of an application, but it also delivers applications that are far more responsive and provide a better user experience than web-based applications.There are plenty of comparisons written on this topic. Moreover, today’s rich-client platform has incorporated many features that originally fueled the move towards web-based development. Features such as on-demand application installation (via Webstart or similar technologies) and multi-tier deployments have become part of the rich-client platform’s native capabilities. Top
How is InPowerForms different from traditional Java client technology?
We have researched various Java-Swing-based-component frameworks that claim to have a data access binding for generic database application development. Borland has an impressive array of component offerings that provide data binding service similar to .NET, but all operate at a lower level of abstraction than Oracle Forms. The missing link in Java community is having an infrastructure with the right level of abstraction akin to Oralce Forms for the sole purpose of constructing database-driven applications effectively. A developer is still far more productive using Oracle Forms than a Java developer armed with Swing and JDBC. InPowerForms brings to the Java community the right level of abstraction and tools what Oracle Forms brought to the last generation of application development.Top

Does not .NET already has what you have?
No. We explored the .NET platform, which we found already has many infrastructure supports possibly sufficient to creating Oracle Forms-like features. Our experience indicated that, as we suspected from the beginning, .NET is just as flexible as any rich-client platform. However, .NET's productivity is not comparable to Oracle Forms when it comes to developing database-driven applications. With .NET, developers still have to struggle with gluing various parts into a cohesive framework, and that is what we are attempting to solve once for all developers. The .NET data access layer (ADO), is reasonably matured as a straight tabular mapping tool. However, ADO lacks many robust features such as automatic version checking found in most object relational (OR) mapping layers (e.g., Hibernate, JDO, and TopLink). ADO .NET is restrictively tabular in nature that maps user interface controls to tables in simplistic ways. For more details read this .Top
Does Oracle already provide ADF/JClient in JDeveloper suite?
Oracle's JClient provides that same level as most vendors data bound components do. It has not achieved at the same level of abstraction as Oracle Forms and thus suffered the same productivity lags. However, Oracle’s ADF layer offers significantly more features in many aspects when compare to .NET's ADO, including sophisticated transaction control and integration with J2EE application server containers. ADF utilizes a business-object layer on top of a tabular model that provides the ability to perform data validations at the business-tier level. Applications built on ADF can choose to be deployed in a multi-tier environment transparent to the front-end tier. In addition, ADF objects are meant to be UI presentation neutral such that the same set of business objects can be reused by a JSP or other rich-client layers.Top

Is InPowerForms open source?
No, InPowerForms is not an open source product. We however want to hear from you if you like to see InPowerForms become open source. Send us an email. If we have enough interest, we can seek corporate sponsor to open up, if not all, a significant part of InPowerForms as open source in the future. Top

Can we license the source code?
Yes. For companies that are concerned about the longevity of InPowerSoft, we will license InPowerForms at the source code level. Or, InPowerSoft will deposit the InPowerForms source code in an escrow account for accessibility in the unlikely event that InPowerSoft dissolves in the future. InPowerForms is meant to be licensed to companies doing their internal IT development and not to other tool vendors that will compete with InPowerSoft's core business. Top

If I am using Oracle Forms and want to do Java, what options do I have?
Oracle already announced that Oracle Forms will be retired in the future on all Oracle applications. You can either learn JSP on JDeveloper in Java or learn Swing and ADF the hard way. The reality is you probably have to learn both. JDeveloper for JSP application development is far more matured than JClient. If you need to deliver a more interactive application akin to Oracle Forms in Java, InPowerForms is probably the only commercial viable and production worthy solution in Oracle space. Top

I am a Oracle Forms developer, how much training do I need to use InPowerForms?
Our companies hired Oracle Forms developers originally for other projects. After InPowerForms was developed, we naturally has to do some retraining. The average retraining time last for about 6 weeks and that include training programming in Java, many often from scratch. This may sound too good to be true.The secrete is, InPowerForms has been heavily templatized into a collection of about 30 different types of Forms style. The majority of the programming needs are a mixture of these templates.Training somebody to use these templates is far easily than training someone who create the templates at first place. Top

I am already a Java developer, how much training do I need to use InPowerForms?
If you are already a Java developer with good database experience. In less than a week, you will be comfortable and be able to produce amazing Forms. In you have no database programming experience, the majority of your time will be spent on learning programming database and very little else related to InPowerForms in comparison. Top

How much productivity gains I can expect from using InPowerForms?
We do not have a scientific benchmark. But a rough quantitative measure is our experience developer can build 2-3 Forms including testing within a single day. These Forms are of moderate complexity having several Blocks per Form. One can actually build a super Form that has 10-15 Blocks as some prefer and it will take proportional longer. But in general do expect to be more productivity than using Oracle Forms and probably few times more productivity than an average Swing/JDBC developer. Top

How do I get started?
You can start by downloading our example. Look at the source code and send us email if you come across questions. Please sign on our bulletin board.Top

How many editions of InPowerForms?
InPowerForms has InPowerForms ADF, InPowerForms RCP editions. Within each major editions it is further divided into enterprise and basic edition.Top

Should I use InPowerForms ADF or InPowerForms RCP?
Both editions offer their distinctive advantages over the other. InPowerForms ADF is built on Swing and Oracle ADF technologies. If you are already using Oracle technologies, we recommend that you use the InPowerForms ADF edition. Your Oracle SQL skills will be 100% reusable. Furthermore, your ADF business components can be reused in your other Oracle JSP applications. Although, Oracle claims ADF is compatible with other SQL92 compliant databases, few have verified the claim or willing to take the risk. For companies that will need to interface with a database other than Oracle's, we recommend using InPowerForms RCP. InPowerForms RCP is built on JBoss's popular Hibernate layer and is thus capable of interfacing with all databases that Hibernate supports, which is quite extensive. In addition, Eclipse RCP is a leading, state-of-the-art platform, which continues to pick up more momentum. We foresee that the Eclipse RCP will continue to be a dominate platform for Java rich-client development, which is why we developed this strategic RCP edition of InPowerForms. Top

What are the differences between enterprise edition and basic edition?
The enterprise edition includes many tools that we found essential in developing most database driven applications. The most notable feature is a built-in security features that can provide point-and-click runtime assignment of capabilities for various InPowerForms objects by role and by user. This is particularly useful to provide or deny access to various components within your application without reprogramming. Please check out our web site for more detail. Top

What is the pricing of InPowerForms and how do I buy them?
See the pricing page. Top

If InPowerForm is so simple to use why would I use your service?
Great question! If you are a small company and are unwilling to pay for InPowerSoft service, you naturally will not get the software because we do not provide a software only license arrangement. If you are big a company and have complex need for building state-of-art Java client applications, the chances are your needs of customization will require more in-depth modifications of InPowerForms that would present non-cost effective challenge to your developers. Having said that, InPowerForms is expected to satisfied a large percentage of your infrastructural needs that will save many man-years of backbreaking development works.

When would you release version 2.0 and what are the improvements?
InPowerForms ADF edition will be released in March 2006 to coincide with the JDeveloper R3 release. It will be available as a download-able add-ons within JDeveloper. InPowerForms RCP will be released when we demonstrate at Eclipse conference in March 2006. Please check out our version 2.0 preview site for details on new or improved features. Both editions have very similar constructs.

I used to get a trial version key, but why there is no such key in version 2.0?
For some of you have already gotten the preview version, we plan to get rid of the licensing key scheme for each trial customer in order to lessen the nuisance of test driving the software. Instead, the trial version can be used in all non-production environment with a maximum ability to open 10 Forms at a time. In short, no more registration is needed to obtain a trial key. Top

What Java IDE should I use?
InPowerForms is a set of Java library and a collection of database schema (for enterprise version). So you can use it in any Java IDE you already are using. However, it is recommended that if you choose InPowerForms ADF edition, using Oracle JDeveloper will provide you with wizardry to manage your ADF business components easily; otherwise, you have to edit its tedious xml files. If your choose InPowerForms RCP version, chances are you already using Eclipse IDE. Eclipse pluggin for JBoss Hibernate will ease the management of database mapping the same way JDeveloper wizardry does for ADF edition.

Does InPowerForms auto-migrate Oracle Forms to Java?
No. Several companies offer tools in migrating old Oracle Forms to some sort of Java implementations. InPowerForms is NOT such tool. The benefits of a migration tool is to expedite your entrance into Java world. However, there are set backs of auto-migration. First, the migration is hardly a push button adventure. Many companies take months with semi-manual aids to assist the migration procedure in order to guarantee the correctness of translation. Second, very often the translated code becomes far more foreign to developers and relearning the translated code is as time consuming as redevelopment. Third, the generated Java code is mostly more procedural than object oriented. These vendors put more emphasis on mimicking Oracle Forms' look and feel at the expense of more rigorous object oriented design and extensibility which are at odd with procedural programming constructs in Oracle Forms. The benefits of auto-migration could be negated from maintainability and extensibility. In short, we recommend company to reimplement the old Oracle Forms in InPowerForms. At the end of the re-implementation, your developers have intimate knowledge of the applications for future expandability and thus brings further longevity to your investment. Top

We normally will send analyst per client's request for a short period of time in order gain understanding on the scope and achievability of the project. After that we work with the client to establish procedures and all necessary instruments for effective project management. Most deliverable can be tested and verified using a replicated database or VPN connection on a daily basis such that the client can keep track of the progress pf the project. At production deployment time and if the client request, we will send experienced engineer to assist in the final steps. Top

We are a consulting company, how do we arrange to use your product?
We will work under a sub-contract perspective, as far as InPowerSoft concerns; the general contractor is our immediate client. We will sign a non-compete contract prohibiting us from working directly with the general contractor's client without a written permission. Top

I am an IT sales individual/organization, do you give commission for business referral?
Absolutely. We set aside a percentage of gross revenue that derived from the first year for commission. Please contact us for details. An agreement will be executed prior to commencing any work. Top