University of Twente Student Theses

Login

A method to leverage legacy Oracle Forms applications in an SOA

Versteeg, Jeroen (2008) A method to leverage legacy Oracle Forms applications in an SOA.

[img] PDF
1MB
Abstract:In the last couple of years, Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) has gained a lot of momentum as a promising concept for IT systems. Vendors and organizations are adopting this technology in hope of creating more flexible and maintainable IT systems. While SOA looks like a very desirable architecture, most organizations do not start with a clean slate, but instead have made large investments in older technology, which usually does not integrate well with SOA. Many of these organizations face a dilemma with respect to the choice between keeping these outdated systems or replacing them with something new. According to market research, thousands of organizations are facing this problem with respect to applications that have been developed using the Oracle Forms application development framework. Now that Oracle is adopting SOA for new products (and newer version of existing products), customers feel pressure to adopt SOA, and need to decide what to do with existing Forms applications. While a lot of research has been done on replacing or re-engineering legacy systems, these approaches are often infeasible because of the costs and risks involved. Because these approaches have been developed using a technical viewpoint and hence do not take into account the particular business problems that need to be solved, they often cannot predict the actual business benefits the approach will deliver. The decision support method presented in this thesis takes a business-oriented viewpoint and helps organizations find a solution which solves the business problems it is actually facing because of the system. To this end, the method directs participants to analyze why exactly the system does not fulfill a particular business requirement, and to find a solution that solves this problem. Since this research acknowledges that legacy applications should be abandoned in the medium to long term, the emphasis lies on finding solutions that either require little investments in the legacy system, or enable a gradual transition towards a more modern application. The method has been validated using a small scale scenario based on a real case. While the findings show the method fills a gap in Oracle's Unified Method and is valid, more research is necessary to create a mature and well-tested method.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Clients:
Oracle
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Information Technology MSc (60025)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/59808
Export this item as:BibTeX
EndNote
HTML Citation
Reference Manager

 

Repository Staff Only: item control page