1
Introduction

1.1 The Internet Changes Everything

With the development of vast virtual outlets for products and information without the traditional cost of real estate, construction, or distribution, the Internet is revolutionizing business and the underlying technology that supports it.

1.1.1 Improvements in Business

The Internet is creating new business opportunities and altering the way we perform common activities, such as shopping, getting directions, managing bank and stock market accounts, tracking down telephone numbers and old friends, and getting news and information.

Businesses have moved many of their internal transactions to their intranets, making the gathering and distribution of time-sensitive information as simple as publishing a URL. Interdependent companies, such as travel agencies and airlines, have moved from a time-consuming, labor-intensive telephone model to a much less costly and far more efficient self-service model via an extranet. Businesses are using the Web to talk to each other and to their customers more directly and at a lower cost, increasing both responsiveness and profitability.

The Internet expands market opportunities, improves business processes by introducing cost-reducing efficiencies, and offers new ways to attract and retain customers.

1.1.2 Improvements in the Underlying Technology

Aside from the monumental business advantage of distributing information and services to a world-wide audience with comparatively minute overhead costs, many additional benefits result from Web application development and deployment. These include:

• Deployment of new versions is easier, faster, and cheaper. To roll out a Web application, simply give users the application's URL. This distribution method reduces the time, cost, and complexity of deploying applications to a large or geographically-dispersed user base by eliminating the need to install application software on each user's desktop machine.

• Centralized distribution means lower total cost of ownership. Web deployment dramatically reduces the cost of administration, maintenance, and network while increasing information accessibility. Instead of multiple outposts providing system administration support, system maintenance and administration is performed from one central location. With Web deployment, application complexity moves off of each user's desktop and onto centrally located, professionally managed application servers. This makes possible professional management of your site on a small number of servers, vastly simplifying, accelerating, and standardizing maintenance tasks and dramatically lowering costs.

• Standards-based development means better integration. Internet application development adheres to the same industry standards (such as Java, Enterprise JavaBeans, HTML, XML, CORBA, HTTP, and so on). Common language means easier and faster integration of newly or separately developed applications.

• Component-based development means increased productivity, easy maintenance, and reusability. Customize applications rapidly in response to the different requirements of a diverse audience. Business developers need only alter affected components and not the entire application. Commonly applied components can easily be reused in other applications. These are just some of the ways organizations are able to respond in "Web time" to user requirements.

1.2 The Oracle Internet Platform

A typical client/server architecture involves two tiers: the client tier, which hosts the application; and the server tier, which hosts the enterprise database against which the application is run. In contrast, the Oracle Internet platform involves three tiers:

• The database tier, where enterprise data is stored

• The server tier, which hosts the application and provides many other services, including Web support

• The client tier, which hosts the browser where the application is displayed

The Oracle Internet platform is all about distributing information to users while centralizing application complexity on a small number of professionally managed servers. It is comprised of database servers, application servers, development tools, and management tools. It is the integrated platform for Web development, deployment, and maintenance of e-business solutions. It's based on open Internet standard interfaces and protocols, including Java, Enterprise JavaBeans, CORBA, HTML, and XML.

Through a standard Internet browser, the Oracle Internet platform manages and processes any type of information content, including text, images, Web pages, video, sound, and e-mail.

Web-based applications built on the Oracle Internet platform scale to terabytes of data and millions of users, provide around-the-clock, year-round reliability, and incorporate the leading security standards for data encryption and integrity.

The Oracle Internet platform is the lowest-cost deployment platform because it simplifies the delivery and management of applications. For example:

• Server scalability means fewer servers for lower cost and easier management.

• Server-side application and data processing mean efficient network utilization.

• On the client side, all you need is a browser: there are no incremental software costs for desktops connecting to a database.

1.3 Oracle Internet Application Server

An important component of the Oracle Internet platform is the Oracle Internet Application Server. This application server is optimized to deploy Oracle Forms applications in a multi-tiered environment. Oracle Internet Application Server is a scalable, secure, middle-tier aplication server. It enables you to deliver web content, host web applications, and conntect back-office applications.

Oracle Internet Application Server is available in two versions: the Standard Edition and the Enterprise Edition. The Standard Edition is appropriate for smaller websites that require minimal transaction processing capablitiy. The Enterprise Edition is recommended for medium to large sized websites that handle a high volume of transactions.

The Oracle Internet Application Server Enterprise Edition contains Oracle Forms Server, which delivers the application infrastructure and the event model to ensure that Internet-based Forms applications automatically scale and perform over any network. Built-in services provided by Oracle Internet Application Server include transaction management, record caching, record locking, exception handling, and load balancing. Business developers don't have to implement low-level code to build these shared services, Oracle Internet Application Server automatically delivers them as part of its own engine.

The application is optimized to reduce network traffic for Internet, intranet, and extranet deployments. Through Oracle Internet Application Server, organizations can choose to deploy via socket-based TCP/IP communication between the Java client and the server and via HTTP 1.1 (which supports firewalls) between the Java client and the server, depending on their system architecture and requirements.

Tight integration with the database server means smooth, reliable communication between the Oracle Internet Application Server engine and the database, in particular thanks to array processing and stored procedures.

There are many additional benefits to be realized from using Oracle Internet Application Server. Here are just a few:

• Extensible optimized Java client. Business developers can incorporate JavaBeans and reuse Java classes in their Forms applications. This extends the client Java applet and enables business developers to build really sophisticated user interfaces. These interfaces leverage the strengths of the Java language and allow for the reuse of existing Java components.

• Automatic scalability over any network. Oracle Internet Application Server natively delivers load balancing capabilities. Load balancing efficiently distributes client requests across available system resources. The application offers the same level of scalability with any web server used as an HTTP listener with the same level of scalability. It is optimized for corporate intranet, extranet, and Internet deployment. You can use the application on LAN, WAN, and dial-up network architectures.

• Built-in optimizations for high performance. Oracle Internet Application Server has many built-in optimizations that work around the two main constraints in typical three-tier architectures: network bandwidth and latency between the client and application server.

  The application reduces network bandwidth by intelligently condensing the data stream using advanced algorithms.

  One way Oracle Internet Application Server tackles latency is through Event Bundling: When a user navigates from item A to item B (such as when tabbing from one entry field to another), a range of pre- and post-triggers may fire, each of which requires processing on the server. Event Bundling "gathers" all the events triggered while navigating between the two objects and delivers them to the server as a single packet for processing. When navigation involves traversing many objects (such as when a mouse click is on a distant object), Event Bundling gathers all events from all of the objects that were traversed and delivers them as a single network message to the server.

• Integration with a highly productive, declarative Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool. Oracle Internet Application Server was developed specifically to serve Oracle Forms applications. This simplifies the transition from development to deployment by eliminating time-consuming issues that can arise when integrating applications and servers created with tools from disparate vendors.

1.4 How This Guide Can Help

When you choose to deploy applications to the Internet, there are many decisions to be made as to how you will go about it. This guide provides information about those decisions and offers suggestions and methods for configuring your system for Web deployment of your applications.

We provide:

• An overview of Forms Server architecture.

• A guide for installing and configuring Forms Server in a variety of Web deployment scenarios

• A section on migrating your legacy client/server applications to the Web

• Sections on capacity planning and load balancing to help you set up multiple servers that work and communicate together to share growing workloads

• Sections on network and security considerations

• Sections on application design considerations and performance tuning for optimizing the performance of your Web applications