Introduction

Oracle Developer/2000 is the next generation of development tools for Microsoft Windows applications development from Oracle Corporation. Oracle Developer/2000 leverages the power of Oracle7 and Microsoft Windows. Oracle7 is the most popular Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) in the world and Microsoft Windows is the most popular Graphical User Interface (GUI) in the world. The previous release of Oracle Developer/2000 was know as the Oracle Cooperative Development Environment (CDE). At times you may see or hear references to CDE2, which is now known as Oracle Developer/2000.

This book is intended to be of value to many different types of readers, including managers of Oracle client/server projects, individuals evaluating development tools, programmers who are new to the Oracle environment, experienced Oracle programmers who are new to the Windows development environment, and students interested in investing in their future careers in the Oracle application development job market.

It will serve you well as an introduction to Oracle Developer/2000, the Oracle7 RDBMS, OLE2 applications, and the integration of these components in a Windows environment. It also covers the development life cycle including project management, analysis, design, development, configuration, integration, and deployment. These are the major topics covered in this book, and the major components of many client/server management information system.

You will be provided with simple and practical examples and exercises that will reinforce the concepts and techniques being explained. And, while developing the examples and exercises throughout the book, you will be developing a completely integrated application system.

The completed system will utilize Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports, Oracle Graphics, Oracle Procedure Builder, Visual Basic Custom Controls, MS Word, MS Excel, MS ClipArt, bitmaps, icons, images, sounds, and video clips. All of the examples and exercises can be found on the companion CD-ROM included with this book.

This book is not intended to be a completely comprehensive reference guide to the Oracle database or the Oracle tools—that would require volumes of text and is already available in that form. Instead, this book summarizes and highlights, the most commonly used and significant features of the Oracle database and tools. It will quickly enable you to become familiar with the important concepts and the complete life cycle of an Oracle development project.

This book does not attempt to cover many other related topics including Oracle CASE, reverse engineering, migration of legacy systems or advanced features of SQL, PL/SQL, and the Oracle database and tools. The limits of scope are set with purpose and forethought, and for the benefit of the reader to quickly understand the significant components of an Oracle development project.

Part I—Starting the Project

Part I covers the motivation, initiation, organization, and analysis of a development project, and includes two chapters: “The Project Foundation,” and “Analysis.”

Part II—The Database

Part II contains four chapters on issues related to the development of a database, including “Logical Data Modeling,” “Physical Database Design,” “Building the Database,” and “Populating the Database.”

Part III—Oracle Developer/2000

Part III provides an overview of the common features of Oracle Developer/2000, as well as a review of the specific features and initial applications development with each tool. It contains five chapters, including “Introducing Oracle Developer/2000,” “Introducing Oracle Forms,” “Introducing Oracle Reports,” “Introducing Oracle Graphics,” and “Introducing Oracle Procedure Builder.”

Part IV—Developing the System

Part IV contains four chapters that complete the development of the application system. These chapters include “Developing Oracle Forms Applications,” “Developing Oracle Reports Applications,” “Developing Oracle Graphics Applications,” and “Integration and Deployment in the Windows Environment.”

Part V—Appendixes

Part V contains eight appendixes that provide reference information on the Oracle Developer/ 2000 menus and properties. These appendixes compliment the chapters in Part III and Part IV.