Oracle Forms

Hello,

I am not an expert on 64-bit vs. 32-bit processing, but at a high level I believe I understand the concepts, and the options with Forms 10g. However, we are looking at making a change to our architecture (and Hardware), and I wanted to be perfectly clear what our options are, thus this posting. For anyone reading, please feel free to comment.

In a nutshell, we are running 32-bit Standalone Forms/Reports 10g (10.1.2.3, the latest version at the time of this writing), Oracle Application Server (AS) software. Our OS is Windows 2003 Standard R2 (32-bit). We are now looking at new servers and new Windows OS's, and we plan to go with this: OS = Windows 2003 Enterprise R2 (64-bit), obviously with an Intel 64-bit processor(s) (Itanium I presume). Both scenarios below will be using this hardware/OS.

Scenario #1: All 32-bit Forms software: We know we can install Oracle AS 10.1.2.3 (Forms/Reports Standalone) x86 (32-bit) software on the 64-bit Windows OS and it will work. We've done this.

Scenario #2: Install 64-bit Forms software: I know Oracle supplies Oracle AS 10.1.2.3 (Forms/Reports Standalone) (64-bit) software for Windows. We've never installed this.

As far as I know, Oracle doesn't supply Developer Suite (DS) for Windows in any other flavor than 32-bit for Windows. We currently use DS for Windows to "build" our Oracle Forms/Reports runtimes (.fmx's, .plx's, .rep's, etc.)

So my questions are these:

1) Is there any benefit to doing Scenario #2 over Scenario #1 above (will Forms/Reports on web perform better)?
2) If so, do the 32-bit runtimes (.fmx's, .plx's, .rep's) need to be recompiled using the 64-bit compiler?
3) In regards to question #2, Oracle doesn't supply Developer Suite software for 64-bit, but I have noticed that frmcmp.exe is supplied in the AS software, so I'm under the assumption that if there is a benefit to recompiling your application and using 64-bit, you could use the AS software to recompile. Is this accurate?

My overall guess is that Scenario #2 would NOT provide benefits to Scenario #1 in terms of application performance, but I'm really anxious to see what others have to say about this, as this is coming up very soon for us and we will need to make a decision. Also realize, we are 100% Forms/Reports application, and our Application Servers do nothing outside of serving up our Forms/Reports application (ie, we don't use Oracle AS software for anything other than Forms/Report Services).

Regards,
Matt

Edited by: Matt W. on Oct 26, 2008 5:08 PM