Rich Internet Application (RIA) for Oracle Database Application

Our Oracle application is written in Oracle Forms. However, there is a requirement for it to be a Rich Internet Application (RIA). I.e. no deployment, accessed via web, looks and navigates (tabbing etc) as closely to a desktop GUI application as possible.

Apex has been discarded as not good enough and will not produce a sufficiently good user experience and does not look good compared to other technologies.

Silverlight is being suggested as the best way forward, but I would like to know what else is out there.

I have had suggestions that the way forward is to use HTML5/CSS, but we need a good framework for managing records. I do not wish to be reinventing the wheel. I understand that Silverlight for Business Applications takes care of some of those requirements.

Also, the idea is to create web services in Oracle and have a Silverlight front-end. Is this possible / the right way 开发者_如何学Pythonof doing things?

Any pointers in the right direction or thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks.

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Apex has been discarded as not good enough and will not produce a sufficiently good user experience and does not look good compared to other technologies.

Oracle Apex has all the features that you are looking for. You can customize it using CSS, users can access it using web and since your current application is in Oracle Forms, you can reuse a lot of your code written in Oracle procedures/packages/triggers. Also, the learning curve for your Oracle Developers would be very smooth.

I'd suggest you to try and create a small module for your future project and see how effective it is in terms of both Development time and the rich UI.

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I don't know much about it, but you might want to look at FormSpider.

And of course there is Oracle ADF.

Like Rajesh, I bridle at the suggestion that Apex is "not good enough", having been heavily involved in a very successful Apex project ;-)

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From my point of view,there is no direct dependence between your future RIA's and the RDBMS you are using now. In other words,features and advantages of Silverlight\Entity Framework are almost equal for different data sources (e.g SQL Server,Oracle and etc).

Also, the idea is to create web services in Oracle and have a Silverlight front-end. Is this possible / the right way of doing things?

Using a middle tier (WCF or WCF RIA Services) as a data access layer will be more preferable than creating web-services in Oracle.

This tutorial can be usefull for you to get some general view of the Silverlight and WCF Ria Services.

http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/WCF-RIA-Services-Part-1-Getting-Started.aspx