Installation of Forms on OEL r5 u5

This post is currently only a wrap up of links I found interesting in installing the forms environment.

Envirionment:
Two hosts: one ... a vmware environment with oracle VM Manager the other with Oracle VM Server.
Next to these I have a NAS which is used to provide the software to all guests on the VM server for sofware and other feeds (a Thecus N5500 with 10TB disk capacity) (NFS is choses over iSCSI because the fact that iSCSI has to be considered as a hardware layer and is therefor dedicated to one controlling machine. Because I want to use it on all machines ... I had it configured as a NFS share)

The VM server has an Intel i7 920 processor with 6GB of ram and 4 TB of disks installed (Acer brand)

On the VM Server the following guest systems will be installed:

• db server: OELr5u2 with Oracle DB 11g, running with 2 cores dedicated and 1.5 GB ram.
• wls admin server: OEL r5u5
• hosts to run managed servers: OELr5u5, initially only one server, with the intention of running 4 managed servers.
• Later on the host with managed servers will be copied to try the concept of clustering ... 

The network ... well very simple ... all hosts will get a fixed ip address within the same subnet.
Since the virtual NIC's are on the same physical system, they use the softnetworked network ... which provides rather high speeds.

Software

The following software is used:
Oracle VM Manager r 2.2.0
Oracle VM Server r 2.2.0
VMWare Fusion (is used to create a linux vm and install the VM manager in it) running on Mac OS X.
Oracle Enterprise Linux r5 u 5.
Weblogic server 11g r1 (10,3,3,0)
FMW - portal, forms, reports and discoverer v 11g r1patch 1 (11,1,1,2)
Patch to FMW - portal, forms, reports and discoverer r11g r1 (11,1,1,3)
For convenience a VM with DB11g.

Installation of the Virtual Machines

To be done

Installation of FMW on the server

Install the WLS server.
Install release 11,1,1,2 of FMW-PFRD
Install on top of that 11,1,1,3 (this is a pure patchset ... big but a patchset)

That's it for now ... 

Links:

• Oracle system requirements and specifications for FMW
• Download the software
• A tutorial on installing forms on windows 
•   

Overwriting files in use by Forms Server

Problem
This is standard behaviour since the server uses memory mapped i/o or ... it considers the file as
part of the working memory environment.
This method is ideal for a production environment but ... not for a development environment.

Solution
Setting the environment variable FORMSxx_MMAP to a particular value (0 or False, depending on the version of the server) will disable the memory mapped i/o mechanism.
Depending on the version of the server other variable

The variable
Forms version 4.5, 5.0, 6.x and 9.x use the FORMSxx_MMAP variable.
Later versions use the variable FORMS_MMAP

The value
Upto version 6.x the value has to be set to 0 for disabling and 1 for enabling the memory mapped i/o.
From version 9.x onward, the values are TRUE for enableing and FALSE for disabling the feature.

An example:
In a 10g environment you would have to insert a line in the .env file for your environment like the following
FORMS_MMAP=FALSE

Oracle Jinitiator - Left handed mouse bug

As if I would like to tell that a mouse is a bug.

Problem:
See metalink bug 2200274
When the functions of the left and right mouse buttons are switched under ms-windows, the function of the selection mouse button, originally the left button, is lost, resulting in having only a context button on the left button.

Research< style="font-weight: bold;">Solution:
A valid solution is to go to a JPI configuration, for the newbies, 'a java plug in'.
This makes the deployment of Jinitiator obsolete but makes the presence for the correct JRE mandatory.
A test with version 1.6.0.10 worked very fine and solved the left-right mouse button problem.

Steps:

First,
Create in your formsweb.cfg file a new configuration section ... or better copy the one you were using. For those of you who did not use configurations ... this is a good time for starting doing so.
A config is identified by squarebrackets like this:
[ MyJPIConfig]

Second,
Point the basehtml files to point to the jpi files:

baseHTMLJInitiator=basejpi.htm
baseHTMLie=basejpi.htm
baseHTML=basejpi.htm

Third,
Configure the archives to be loaded by means of the archive_jpi tag:
archive_jpi=frmall.jar,laf.jar,

Fourth,
And ... this should come first ... But since people only remember the last thing they are told ... I'm putting this as the last thing to do.
Enable the correct download of the JRE to be used and set the set the correct identifications for the plugins to be used.
Normally you would download it and then put it on your intranet with the correct url.

Fifth,
This is optional ... but gives some additional configuration possibilities:
envFile=
form=
userid= if no connectstring has to be used.
pageTitle=
width=
height=
separateFrame=
lookAndFeel=
colorScheme=

Now you should have something like the following:

[ MyJPIConfig]
baseHTMLJInitiator=basejpi.htm
baseHTMLie=basejpi.htm
baseHTML=basejpi.htm
jpi_download_page=http://jan.hellings.be/jre/jpi_16010_windows.exe
jpi_classid=clsid:CAFEEFAC-0016-0000-0010-ABCDEFFEDCBA
jpi_codebase=http://java.sun.com/update/1.6.0/jinstall-6-windows-i586.cab#Version=1,6,0,10
jpi_mimetype=application/x-java-applet;jpi-version=1.6.0_10
envFile=ApplicationEnvFile.env
form=startform.fmx
userid=defuser/defpassword@defconnectstring
otherparams=buffer_records=%buffer% debug_messages=%debug_messages% array=%array% obr=%obr% query_only=%query_only% quiet=%quiet% render=%render% record=%record% tracegroup=%tracegroup% log=%log% term=%term%
pageTitle=MyPageTitleTexteke
width=1280
height=750
separateFrame=true
lookAndFeel=Oracle
colorScheme=blaf

Conclusion
It seems to me that performance is much better using the newer version of JRE than the one provided by Jinitiator.

Greetz,
Jan.

Installation forms server on Oracle Enterprise Linux

I got a problem with a missing library which caused forms server not to be able to run.
I guess this was also the source of a frm-92101 problem cause after solution the frm message did not occure anymore.

Installation was on Oracle Enterprise Linux which is based on a redhat distribution but which does not contain the library libXm.so.2. (open motif library)
Just install this library and a number of problems seem to vanish.