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Abstract

Forms2Net is an ATX Software commercial reengineering tool that automatically converts Oracle Forms applications to the equivalent .NET (C#) ones, with approximately 75% rate of automatic conversion. From the reengineering and transformation theoretical viewpoint, Forms2Net falls in the general category of language-platform conversion tools. As theory and practice indicate, for such tools to be effective, there are two major issues that must be handled: (a) the resolution of the semantic gap between the pair of source-target languages and (b) the resolution of the dependencies (e.g., API dependencies) on functionalities provided by default by the source platform or on programming idiosyncrasies of the source platform (in this case Oracle Forms). This paper presents the important practical aspects of Forms2Net and the underlying technology. We discuss the semantic gap between Oracle Forms and .NET forms and the design principles and solution strategies used to bridge this gap.

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Andrade, L., Gouveia, J., Antunes, M., El-Ramly, M., Koutsoukos, G. (2006). Forms2Net – Migrating Oracle Forms to Microsoft .NET. In: Lämmel, R., Saraiva, J., Visser, J. (eds) Generative and Transformational Techniques in Software Engineering. GTTSE 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4143. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11877028_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11877028_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-45778-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46235-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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