Working with Oracle Forms Developer 10G on Windows 7 Pro x64

First problem is to install Forms 10G on Windows 7 (either 32 bit or 64 bit). Steps to achieve this are :

• Change Windows 7 virtual memory from automatic to manually since OUI do not recognize automatic virtual memory ( set it from 6000M to 12000M on 4GB Ram machine)
• In setup.exe change compatibility mode to "Windows XP SP2 (or 3)" and set "Run As Administrator"
• Ignore PSAPI.DLL errors for now. I did not come to any problems for now ignoring this errors.

Now you can run Forms, load new form and so on. But the problem is when you start OC4J Instace to run form locally (with default Forms Jinitiator) in IE8 or IE9 nothing happens. So i changed runtime to run froms with default JRE installed on system. To do so i changed in formsweb.cfg:

• baseHTML=base.htm --> baseHTML=basejpi.htm
• baseHTMLjinitiator=basejini.htm --> baseHTMLjinitiator=basejpi.htm
• jpi_mimetype=application/x-java-applet;jpi-version=1.4.2_06 --> jpi_mimetype=application/x-java-applet

With mimetype i ommit the version number so there is no need to instal JRE 1.4.2_06. Instead forms runtime process is using any JRE installed on system (in my case it is 1.7.0_21)

I read that on Firefox 12 version number is a must but did not tested that.

How to Convert Oracle Reports to UTF-8

One of the problems i faced recently is how to convert CP1250 (EE8MSWIN1250) codepage to UTF-8 codepage in Oracle Reports. Problem is  that Forms and Reports server is installed with NLS_LANG set to EE8MSWIN1250 with 5 applications consist of hundreds forms and reports. One smaller app need to execute reports with RUN_REPORT_OBJECT but in UTF-8 codepage.

One solution was to install separate Report Server with NLS_LANG set to UTF-8 but that requires more resources and licences.
My solution is to use GNU software called ICONV (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/) which converts files to another code page.
First task is to create report (.XML) on report server with RUN_REPORT_OBJECT to some folder.
Than with host comand execute next batch script:

set PATH=D:\oracle\FRHome\jdk\bin;C:\Iconv\bin -- i use to copy all windows PATH to this variable

iconv -f CP1250 -t UTF-8 %1 > %2 -- %1 is source where CP1250 report is

                                                           -- %2 is where we put UTF8 report to

exit

After that i call Web.Show_document to show UTF-8 file in IE9.