Oracle Forms Modernization
You can't modernize what you can't read.
Whether you're moving to APEX, rewriting in Java or .NET, or just lifting to Forms 14c, every modernization project hits the same wall first: the people scoping it can't open the forms they're scoping. sqling makes a legacy Forms estate legible to everyone on the project — in your browser, with nothing uploaded anywhere.
Why these projects stall
-
The documentation is the code
Twenty years of business rules live inside WHEN-VALIDATE-ITEM triggers and program units. There's no spec — the
.fmbis the design. Developers maintain it daily; everyone else has to take their word for what it does. -
The tooling is developers-only
Opening a
.fmbmeans a Forms Builder license, a client install, and a machine old enough to run it. So the design is visible only to the developers who already have that toolchain — the analysts, testers and project managers who have to understand the application are locked out of the one artifact that defines it. -
Scope is a guess
Without an inventory you're estimating a rewrite you can't see. How many forms are dead? Which share a template? Which touch the tables you're about to change? Wrong answers here set the budget.
Read the estate first. Decide second.
The unglamorous first phase of a migration is inventory and comprehension, and it's where most of the risk hides. These tools exist to compress it.
-
Inventory what's there
Open every
.fmb,.mmband.pll— binary, directly, with no conversion step. Forms 6i through 14c. -
Understand each form
Object Navigator, canvas preview with items and prompts laid out in the form's own coordinate system, and a property palette with defaults and subclassed inheritance already resolved.
-
Extract the logic
Every trigger and program unit, searchable across the whole form, with the tables each one touches collected separately.
-
Compare and track
Diff two versions of a form to see what actually changed between releases — or what a vendor changed without telling you.
-
Document it
Printable reports with object counts, PL/SQL footprint, database dependencies and cross-references — the artifact your migration plan gets built on.
Nothing leaves your machine
Every free tool here parses entirely in the browser. Your forms are never uploaded, never stored, never transmitted — which is the only sane way to handle proprietary applications belonging to a bank, a hospital or a state agency. You can verify it: load a form, then pull your network cable. Everything still works.
Free tools
Run entirely client-side. No upload, no account.
- Oracle Forms Viewerfmb · mmb · pll · xml
- Oracle Forms Diffcompare two forms
- FMB → XML Converterfmb
- Oracle Reports Viewerrdf
- Oracle Reports Comparerdf
- Data Dictionary Reportsample report (rdf)
- Forms Calculatorsample form (fmb)
- DB Comment Editorsample form (fmb)
- PL/SQL Playgroundtemporarily offline
- SQL Statement Tokenizerjavascript
Pro tools paid
The free tools work a file at a time. These run the whole estate in one pass — point them at hundreds of forms and reports and come back to finished output. Sign in.
- Batch Forms Documentationfmb · rdf
- Batch FMB → XMLfmb
- Batch RDF → XMLrdf
Modernizing a Forms application?
Data Design Group has been building and migrating Oracle systems for decades — the tools on this site came out of that work. Get in touch.