A few years ago, I authored a blog post series about modernizing an Oracle Forms application to an Oracle APEX app. With the introduction of the MCP Server for Oracle Database, there should be a faster way to modernize these forms, and that’s the purpose of this blog post: to evaluate how efficient you can be using MCP.

What do you need?

  • Access to a schema in Oracle Database
  • AI Service Provider
  • SQL Developer Extension for VS Code, which includes:
    • SQLcl
    • MCP server

Let’s use a simple sample form: Customers.

Fig 1. Screenshot of the Customers form in runtime

Steps:

  1. Convert the form (fmb) to XML.

    Simply use the Forms2XML Conversion Tool to convert the form. Read this [Forms to APEX] Converting FMBs to XML blog post for the step-by-step.
  2. Understand the logic and purpose of the form.

    The first thing you probably want to know about the form you’re modernizing is its business purpose, right? Let’s ask that: Describe the business purpose of this form and enable the XML as context:

    Fig 2. Description of the business purpose of the form

  3. Verify that all the database objects are in the Oracle Database schema.

    First, connect to your schema to check the database objects and then confirm that the form is compatible with the schema:
    Fig 3. Connection to the database schema
    Fig 4. Confirmation that Database Objects are available in the schema
  4. Move the key business logic to the Oracle Database.

    Fig 5. Creation of the package, which contains relevant business logic
  5. Build the APEX App

    In the next blog post, I’ll show you how to build the APEX app based on the business requirements of the form. Stay tuned!

Summary

The MCP + AI approach significantly reduces the time required to analyze the form, evaluate its logic, and migrate key business logic to the database. Having this part ready allows you to focus 100% on building your app, either with AI or from scratch.

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