The first part, installing Weblogic on RHEL / Oracle Linux 6 and configuring it Oracle Forms 12.2 is quite drawn out.
Tim H. has some very good articles that are very useful, click on the “here” links below for Tim’s most excellent blogs regarding Weblogic installs, and configs specifically for Oracle forms, the Oracle documentation is a bit too generic. Note: installing Weblogic 12.2 without a domain is the first and a prerequisite step.
Note: I only installed forms related software, not reports – so this blog is about using Oracle Forms 12.2 on Linux – with an option to use Forms Builder from Windows.
Generally, the high level process to setup 12.2 to run Oracle Forms is:
For those not familiar, building Oracle forms is done with Forms Builder, then deploying the Oracle Forms 12.2 you build is done with Weblogic/Fusion Infrastructure stack.
So the steps would be something like…
Install the WebLogic 12.2 application server – no domain creation in this step is necessary if your goal is running a form or report here.
Install Forms and Reports, it is also referred to as Fusion Infrastructure 12.2 (to create Weblogic domain(s) specifically for forms and or reports etc.) again Tim’s docs here.
Additional note: Forms install will offer two options – standalone forms builder and Forms and Reports Deployment, just pick the latter “Forms and Reports Deployment” and both a standalone forms builder and the deployment stack will be installed.
My preference is to build the forms from Windows 7 or 10 Pro and copy the .fmb to the deployment / Linux environment, just because that is normally the approach that I have taken over the years. If you choose this option, install the forms builder environment on Windows – you’ll have to copy the forms .fmb (source) to the deployment env. and then compile the .fmb in the deployment environment in to an .fmx (executable version). Using this approach is quite common in the industry.
Run RCU – this utility creates schemas to support security etc. for the installation here.
Configure your forms and or reports managed server (I just did forms) on Linux here.
setup a tnsnames.ora file in TNS_ADMIN
Configure formsweb.cfg with an application section for your form:
$DOMAIN_HOME/config/fmwconfig/servers/WLS_FORMS/applications/formsapp_12.2.1/config/formsweb.cfg
I added the following apps section to formsweb.cfg:
[jobs]
form=jobs.fmx
pageTitle=jobs from formsweb.cfg
width=1024
height=768
separateFrame=true
Copy your form (.fmb) to the path in default.env in the same path as formsweb.cfg. This is my path:
FORMS_PATH=/u01/app/oracle/product/12.2.1/forms:/u01/app/oracle/config/domains/frsdomain/config/fmwconfig/components/FORMS/instances/forms1
Compile your form with frmcmp.sh – hint: find $DOMAIN_HOME -name frmcmp.sh or here is one of my compilations:
# copy the form from the VM share to:
/u01/app/oracle/config/domains/frsdomain/config/fmwconfig/components/FORMS/instances/forms1
# now cd into the directory where the form is to the .fmx gets created there as well
cd /u01/app/oracle/config/domains/frsdomain/config/fmwconfig/components/FORMS/instances/forms1
$FR_INST/bin/frmcmp module=JOBS_MULTI.fmb module_type=form userid=jobs/jobs@pdb2
Restart ohs1 (Apache I believe), and WLS_FORMS WebLogic managed server – once you have configured formsweb.cfg and moved your form in and compiled it.
Setup Webstart
Webstart
So why do you need Webstart? You don’t necessarily but, it is an easy way to run a form without dealing with the restrictions of today’s secure browsers. Oracle Forms used to be run from a browser plug-in, and as you may know, many browsers no longer support plug-ins. Webstart creates a file with extension .jnlp that runs the form from a Oracle supplied java application forms servlet frmservlet.jnlp. Using the syntax below, Oracle prompts you to store the .jnlp file any where you want and then after saving simply double clicking on the .jnlp file will run the form. Note: java has to be installed as a prerequisite to using Webstart. I have jdk 1.8 installed and configured prior to using the URL below.
http://mid1.localdomain:9001/forms/frmservlet?config=webstart&form=jobs&userid=jobs/jobs@pdb2
Reference:
https://oracle-base.com/articles/12c/oracle-forms-and-reports-12c-installation-on-oracle-linux-6-and-7
Here are the Linux based environment variables I used in this blog:
# User specific environment and startup programs
export ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
export ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/12.2.1
export FORMS_BUILDER_CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/jlib/
export MW_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME
export WLS_HOME=$MW_HOME/wlserver
export WL_HOME=$WLS_HOME
#export DOMAIN_BASE=$ORACLE_BASE/product/12.2.1/user_projects/domains
#export DOMAIN_HOME=$DOMAIN_BASE/base_domain
export DOMAIN_BASE=$ORACLE_BASE/config/domains
export DOMAIN_HOME=$DOMAIN_BASE/frsdomain
export OHS_INST=$DOMAIN_HOME/config/fmwconfig/components/OHS/instances/ohs1
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.8.0_131
PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH:$HOME/bin
export FR_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME
export ORACLE_INSTANCE=$DOMAIN_HOME/config/fmwconfig/components/FORMS/instances/forms1
export FR_INST=$ORACLE_INSTANCE
FORMS_PATH=/u01/app/oracle/product/12.2.1/forms:/u01/app/oracle/config/domains/frsdomain/config/fmwconfig/components/FORMS/instances/forms1