by Clarisa Maman Orfali, Oracle ACE Pro.
The provider of IT solutions, InfoPRO, decides to modernize its IT solutions to enter the world of low-code web application development and thereby mainly improve security, usability, development agility, and cost reduction.
About the Customer
InfoPRO Consulting LLC. has been a leading provider of software and IT services since 1991 in Puerto Rico. They specialize in insurance, hospitals, car dealerships, collection agencies, and other industries. All of these solutions help their customers boost their productivity.
All solutions offered by InfoPRO were developed with Visual FoxPro. As hardware and operating systems continued and evolved, Visual FoxPro, based on 32-bit architecture, became very difficult to scale to meet the requirements of modern business demands. After Microsoft announced the withdrawal of support for the tool in 2015, InfoPRO focused on finding a reliable and easy-to-learn tool to migrate their solutions and meet their customers’ business requirements.
Investigating different alternatives, InfoPRO decided in 2016 to advance in the modernization of one of its solutions regarding insurance management using Oracle APEX. One of the main factors in their decision was that the graphical web interface was adjusted to what they were looking for; in addition, the development cycle was faster, and they could extend their solutions to mobile devices. On the other hand, but not least, they could find documentation, tutorials, and other materials to speed up the learning of Oracle APEX for their development team.
Business Challenge
With the solutions developed in a desktop-type tool, the main problem was the maintenance of the applications and the implementation of new user requirements.
Every time the application maintenance was carried out, it had to be done in each of the customer’s location; these implied higher costs and more work time. In addition, applications at the file system level were more prone to corruption due to power outages, which led to data loss and downtime, severely affecting customer productivity.
Another problem they faced was the construction of reports, each customer requested different requirements for the same report due to their commercial activity, so for the main report, 15 or 20 additional reports could be released depending on the customer’s needs. When InfoPRO began upgrading its solutions to Oracle APEX, it was able to eliminate the number of additional reports, concentrating all additional reporting requirements into a single main report, drastically reducing application reporting maintenance.
A crucial factor that determined the modernization of the solutions was the time it took to develop any new customer requirements or solve user problems in day-to-day work.
I am surprised and grateful for this platform. I have looked for RAD-type applications (rapid application development) because I wanted to migrate our solutions quickly, with a modern web interface, with low cost, and that is scalable; all this gave Oracle APEX!
Javier Porrata, IT Manager, InfoPRO Consulting LLC.
Differences between Visual FoxPro and Oracle APEX
These differences between both tools drove the path to modernization using Oracle APEX:
- Platform: Visual FoxPro is a desktop-based application development tool that runs on the Windows operating system. On the other hand, Oracle APEX is a web-based development platform accessed through a web browser from anywhere.
- Database: Visual FoxPro uses its proprietary database format, while Oracle APEX uses the Oracle Database as its backend.
- Language: Visual FoxPro uses its programming language called Visual FoxPro language, which is based on the xBase language. In contrast, Oracle APEX combines SQL, PL/SQL, HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
- Features: Visual FoxPro is primarily used for desktop application development and provides features like database management, report generation, and user interface design. Oracle APEX is designed for web application development and provides features like security, data validation, and integration with other web technologies.
- Support and maintenance: Visual FoxPro is no longer supported by Microsoft and has not been updated since 2007. In contrast, Oracle APEX is continuously updated and fully supported by Oracle Corporation.
Results
In a period of six months, the customer successfully modernized 150 Visual FoxPro forms with Oracle APEX and 80 Visual FoxPro reports using JasperReportsIntegration on Oracle Cloud with the following results:
- The use of Oracle APEX to replace Visual FoxPro solutions has proven to be paramount in addressing the business needs of InfoPRO.
- With Interactive Reports, Oracle APEX has provided customers with an easy way to display data, allowing them to make their own customizations to facilitate business decision-making.
- InfoPRO cut development time in half and saw an 80% reduction in support tickets by modernizing its Visual FoxPro solutions with Oracle APEX. In addition, Oracle APEX helped reduce development time for new customer requirements and substantially increased the speed of process execution and print reports.
- The business logic residing on the Visual FoxPro forms was moved to the Oracle Database which helps to centralize the logic and be more efficient when using it along the forms.
- Customer training and education are essential when performing a migration/upgrade of this magnitude. Thanks to the ease of use of Oracle APEX and the materials available, as well as the help of the large community of experts, InfoPRO was able to train its customers to adapt to the new user interface and web management.
- Another essential factor that Oracle APEX provided to InfoPRO was to improve its business model by incorporating two types of services: On-premise and the Cloud.
- The team involved in the project were two experts Oracle APEX developers provided by the partner and the customer assigned two internal developers to help with the modernization.
- There are still some applications developed in Visual FoxPro in InfoPRO, and the goal is that in the short and medium term, these applications will also be modernized using Oracle APEX.
Partners
Clarisa Maman Orfali, Oracle ACE Pro,has been an Information Systems Engineer specializing in Oracle APEX since 2012 and focuses on application development, training, consulting and support.
Daniel Bozzolo participated in this project as Senior Oracle APEX Developer. He was a great professional who made a big difference, and it was a pleasure to have worked and shared his experience with the team. We always remember him fondly. R.I.P. 1965 – 2021.