Re: [GNUe-dev] GNU enterprise development

[Reinhard Mueller]

Rob,

Am Donnerstag, den 15.04.2010, 21:48 +0200 schrieb Rob Heusdens:
> I saw this website about GNU enterprise on the FSF wiki about a
> priority project for an Oracle forms replacement. 
> (http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/Oracle_Forms)
> 
> I am interested in working on this project, but I have no prior
> experience in programming in Python nor using SVN.

Please note that we have just switched from SVN to Bazaar. I'll update
the info on the web page RSN, in short:

The official trunk repositories are locate at:
bzr.savannah.gnu.org/srv/bzr/gnue/tools/common/
bzr.savannah.gnu.org/srv/bzr/gnue/tools/appserver/
bzr.savannah.gnu.org/srv/bzr/gnue/tools/forms/
bzr.savannah.gnu.org/srv/bzr/gnue/tools/reports/
bzr.savannah.gnu.org/srv/bzr/gnue/tools/navigator/
bzr.savannah.gnu.org/srv/bzr/gnue/tools/designer/
bzr.savannah.gnu.org/srv/bzr/gnue/tools/sample/
bzr.savannah.gnu.org/srv/bzr/gnue/www/

> Here are some questions:
> 
> - What level of compatibility has GNU Enterprise Forms with Oracle
> forms. Is there a mapping of Oracle forms triggers with GNU Enterprise
> Forms triggers?

I have no experience with Oracle Forms, but I seem to remember that the
previous maintainers (James Thompson, Jason Cater) used GNUe Forms to
replace Oracle Forms apps.

> Is it in principle possible to build a converter form Oracle Forms FMT
> format text-source to be converted to the XML input format for
> Enterprise forms.

In principle, this should be possible, but I don't know whether all
available options in Oracle Forms are mirrored in GNUe Forms.

It might even be possible that GNUe reads Oracle's native format and
creates the internal data structures from that rather going the step
through XML format.

> Is compatibility with Oracle Forms a target/purpose for GNU Enterprise
> (as it is for the high-priority FSF project Oracle forms).

So far, it was not an explicit target, but since this is an FSF
high-priority project, I'd rather see it implemented in GNUe than in an
independent new tool. Also, I believe that GNUe is closer to that target
than anything else out there.

If you are interested in contributing to GNUe to implement compatibility
with Oracle Forms, your work will be much appreciated, and I will try to
help you as much as I can.

> - Is it possible to combine within one form datasources of different
> databases?

Yes.

> - Is the GNU Enterprise project still GPL, when cxTools is needed
> which depend on proprietary Oracle library modules? Is there a
> workaround for this?

This is something which would have to be checked with the licensing team
of FSF in detail. Maybe the fact that the database drivers are plugins
which use a kind of "standard interface", and there are several drivers
using the same plugin, might play a role here.

> - Is the current GNU Enterprise release a stable release?

Yes. Unstable releases contain "alpha", "beta", "pre" or "rc" in the
version number.

Thanks,
Reinhard

P.S. your message was caught in my spam filter, and saw it only by
chance. So if I don't reply to a message from you in future, please
resend it, and maybe put my personal email address in CC.

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