After working with Oracle databases and Apex for many years, I want to get some knowledge about Oracle forms & reports, because they are still quite widely used.
I've never seen Oracle forms & reports, so I want to create a development installation for learning purposes. Unfortunately installing Oracle forms seems a bit more tedious than I expected and I'm a bit stuck.
Windows installation
I first tried installing Oracle 12c (from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/forms/downloads/index.html) on windows 7 x64. I installed the "Standalone forms builder", because when I chose "Forms and reports deployment", I got this error:
After installation I tried to start frmbld.exe, but immediately got this error:
FRM-91135: fatal error: message file D:\oracle\client\user123\product\12.1.0\client_1\forms\mesg\fmcus.msb not found
My oracle client is installed in that directory, but the mentioned file is certainty not there.
linux installation
Googling around I did not find any solution for this problem, so i decided to switch to a Linux virtual box machine. I installed Oracle linux x64 and then installed with a download from the same page again.
Once more I could only choose "Standalone forms builder", when I chose "Forms and reports deployment" I got exactly the same error as on windows. The installation ran successful.
After installation I tried to start formbuilder, this time I was presented this error:
./frmbld: error while loading shared libraries: libXm.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
So now I'm a bit stuck. My questions are:
- Am I going the right way with the way I'm trying to install Oracle forms? or is there a better / easier way?
- Do I need a "Forms and reports deployment" to be able to experiment with Oracle forms? or is the standalone installation the right way to go?
- Are there any pre-installed virtual machines available for this? (I googled but couldn't find anything.)
- Do I need a running Oracle database to be able to experiment with Oracle forms?
