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Oracle Designer was Oracle's CASE tool for designing an
information system An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...
and generating it. After generating the information system one is able to edit the generated code with
Oracle Developer Suite Oracle Developer Suite is a suite of development tools released by the Oracle Corporation. The principal components were initially Oracle Forms and Oracle Reports and the suite was later expanded to include Oracle Designer and JDeveloper amongst ...
. As of April 2018 this product has reached its end of life and is now in ''sustaining support'' only. Alternative modeling and design tools are
Oracle JDeveloper JDeveloper is a freeware Integrated development environment, IDE supplied by Oracle Corporation. It offers features for development in Java (programming language), Java, XML, SQL and PL/SQL, HTML, JavaScript, BPEL and PHP. JDeveloper covers the f ...
and
Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word ''or ...
.


History

The product's original name was Oracle CASE and it was developed in England. Oracle CASE was based on Oracle corporations "Computer Aided Software Engineering" method (CASE Method). CASE Method was in turn developed by Oracle Consulting UK in the 1980's based on modelling techniques such as Richard Barker et al's Entity Relationship Modelling. Eventually the product would be known as Oracle Designer, with a complementary product Oracle Developer (although in practice the combination of Oracle Designer/Developer was most commonly used). Oracle became the dominant database and enterprise application vendor in the 1990's and as a consequence Oracle Designer/Developer was used by many enterprises from the mid 1990's to the mid 2000's. A product called SQL Data Dictionary (SDD) was a precursor to Oracle CASE.


Context

In the 1980's relational database systems, running on unix based servers, became popular for administrative systems used by corporations and governments. Major factors were low maintenance cost and high developer productivity compared to earlier technologies. As increasingly large systems were developed, software development teams struggled to manage requirements and maintain code quality. Oracle CASE was initially used by Oracle Consulting UK's quality management team and later became the de-facto standard for Oracle Custom Development (Custom development as opposed to packaged application software). Oracle CASE Method later became known as Oracle Custom Development Method, with a similar approach for customisations of Oracle's Application Suite called Oracle Application Development Method. Oracle sold their Designer and Developer product's to enterprises and consulting groups, who in turn created thousands of systems that are still in place as of 2021. The design philosophy behind Oracle Designer and competing tools in the 80's and 90's was the Three-schema-architecture that separated an external schema, logical schema and internal schema. For Oracle's product line, the internal schema corresponded to the inner workings of their relational database, the logical schema corresponded to SQL and the external schema corresponded to screens and reports.


Concepts

Oracle Designer was based on a well thought out set of concepts that suited the types of systems being developed from the 1980's to the mid 2000's. It's easiest to describe these concepts separately in terms of skills, structure and technology:


Skills

In terms of skills, software designers were expected to think out database structures in entity relationship models and functional decomposition models, then transform those models into database definitions and modules (the screens and reports). Software developers were then expected to elaborate the database definitions and modules to create working code. Finally the day to day running of the system was expected to be carried out by database administrators, who had detailed knowledge of the database internals.


Structure

Oracle Designer/Developer divided software development into data and applications, which were viewed at three levels of abstraction; Modelling, Design and implementation. This gives a 2x3 matrix of views which was visible throughout the product's lifecycle: # Entity Relationship Model. This is a high level abstraction of the database structure. Used primarily to generate the database design. # Database design. This is a representation of the tables, views, constraints of the database, with additional annotations. To illustrate the difference with the above; where an entity relationship model would show a relationship between two entities, the Database design would include additional columns for a foreign key, the foreign key constraint and an index over the foreign key columns. All of these could be generated from the entity relationship model, ensuring consistent naming and traceability. The names of tables and columns in many Oracle production databases in use today are due to the use of Oracle Designer. Later versions of the tool allowed specification of most of the internals of the Oracle database such as tablespaces and files. # Database Definition Language (DDL) generation from the Database design. # Function model. This is a function decomposition model, where each function contains a description and a CRUD matrix against the Entity Relationship model. # Modules. This modelled the screens, reports and other application components. Mostly used for screens, because of the availability of code generation for Oracle (Developer) Forms. It was common for # Application code. This consisted mostly of Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports, Stored procedures for the Oracle Database. Initially code was not stored in the Oracle Designer Repository, but in later versions developers were encouraged to add code to the repository, which was merged during code-generation. The client-server architecture of Oracle's Developer product was typical of the 1990's; PC computers running Oracle Forms and Reports that communicated with an Oracle Database over a network protocol called SQL*NET. This structure was simpler than the software development processes that came before and was a better fit to the available technology. It was also simpler and led to a higher level of code generation than competing methodologies of the time such as IBM's Rational Unified Process.


Technology


Repository

Oracle Designer was initially based around a database that held design models, called a repository, not to be confused with a modern GIT repository ( A dictionary definition of a repository is a safe central place where things are stored). Later the Oracle Designer Repository included models and code, but always stored in an Oracle Database.


Modelling and design tools

The tools that made up Oracle Designer each had their view on the repository, with which to create and edit models, generate more detailed models, generate code or inspect the quality of a model. For example specification designers were expected to indicate which data elements a function would use, so that the person designing the database structure could verify there were no unused data elements. Another example is the generation of a database definition from an entity relationship model, which eventually would be used to generate table creation scripts. Early users of Oracle Designer tended to focus on modelling and generating the database structures and often neglected the function model and modules. Initially the Oracle Designer user interface was developed using Oracle Forms and Oracle Reports. This was a character mode user interface that was typically used in terminal sessions or MS-Dos, with a GUI diagram editor that ran on Unix X-Windows terminals only. When graphical user interfaces became easily available on the Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 operating systems in the mid 1990's, a stopgap version was released in Forms 4.0 but quickly shelved and redeveloped in C++ as a Windows only program with sophisticated diagramming tools.


Code repository

By the time Oracle Designer became obsolete it encompassed code generation of Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports, Database triggers, Stored Database Procedures. It would be commonplace for large portions of a systems code to be generated in this fashion, with developers working around the code generators to add custom code at predetermined lifecycle events.


Reasons for moving away from Oracle Designer in the 2000's

Three trends made the Oracle Developer tools obsolete and Oracle Designer with it.


The internet

Oracle Designer/Developer was aimed at development of administrative systems that were mainly used internally by enterprises. Many applications appearing in the 2000's required customers to perform some form of self-service data entry. The architecture of Oracle Developer was not well suited to the needs and technologies of the internet because it would have required users on the internet to install some kind of application and then directly connect to a database. Although later versions of Oracle Developer included an application server, it required a java based plug-in to be installed in the users-browser which placed high demands on end-users browsers. This posed a challenge for organisations with a fleet of older computers and was impractical for customer-facing applications. Eventually enterprises moved to other development tools which supported HTTP/HTML form based transactions, removing the need for the associated Oracle Designer.


Integration requirements

After introducing systems for internal business processes in the 70's to the 90's, enterprises started to place more emphasis on integration between systems. Internet technologies such as HTTP, SOAP and Web-services became industry standards for data-exchange, but Oracle Developer's architecture made it hard to activate part of an application from an external source.


Graphical user interfaces

From 2000 onwards, graphical user interfaces and usability became a major factor in adopting newer development stacks. Oracle Developer was intended for, and very good at administrative applications that are used for data entry by enterprise employees. New users had to be trained how to use certain key-combinations in order to user the applications. For example each screen had a query and insert mode which allowed users to find and manipulate thinly veiled database records. Screens tended to resemble a collection of spreadsheet-like tables with a menu structure. Expectations of system user-friendliness increased in the 2000s and eventually outweighed the development productivity advantages of generating these types of applications.


Components

;Business Process Modelling * Process Modeller ;Systems Analysis Modelling * ER Diagrammer * Dataflow *
Function Hierarchy Function or functionality may refer to: Computing * Function key, a type of key on computer keyboards * Function model, a structured representation of processes in a system * Function object or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-oriente ...
;Design Wizards * Database Wizard *
Application Wizard Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...
;Systems Design * Data Schema * Module Logic * Module Data *
Preferences In psychology, economics and philosophy, preference is a technical term usually used in relation to choosing between alternatives. For example, someone prefers A over B if they would rather choose A than B. Preferences are central to decision the ...
*
Module Structure Module, modular and modularity may refer to the concept of modularity. They may also refer to: Computing and engineering * Modular design, the engineering discipline of designing complex devices using separately designed sub-components * Mo ...
;Client/Server Generators *
Server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...
- Oracle database objects (tables, indexes, constraints etc) *
Oracle Forms Oracle Forms is a software product for creating screens that interact with an Oracle database. It has an IDE that includes an object navigator, property sheet, and code editor that uses PL/SQL. It was originally developed to run server-side in ...
*
Oracle Reports Oracle Reports is a tool for developing reports against data stored in an Oracle database. Oracle Reports consists of Oracle Reports Developer (a component of the Oracle Developer Suite) and Oracle Application Server Reports Services (a component ...
*
Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic .NET (now simply referred to as "Visual Basic"), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic ( ...
* Web server * Microsoft Help *
C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
Object Layer ;Utilities * Repository Object Navigator (RON) * Matrix * Repository Reports * Admin Utility *
SQL*Plus SQL Plus is the most basic Oracle Database utility, with a basic command-line interface, commonly used by users, administrators, and programmers. Command types SQL Plus understands five categories of text: # SQL statements # PL/SQL blocks # SQL ...
*
Online help Online help is topic-oriented, procedural or reference information delivered through computer software. It is a form of user assistance. The purpose of most online help is to assist in using a software application, web application or operating sys ...


Versions

Oracle CASE 1 Oracle CASE 2 Oracle CASE 3 Oracle CASE 4 Oracle CASE 5 - developed using SQL*Forms 3 character mode screens Oracle CASE 5.1 was a major redevelopment where the screens were redeveloped using the Oracle Forms 4.0 which provided a GUI interface The version numbers get confusing at this point because the numbers go backwards. The software was renamed and the next version released was Oracle Designer/2000 6.0 (not to be confused with Designer 6 that was released years later). The next minor release changed the numbering system to be in line with Oracle Developer, so it was named Designer 1.1 Designer 1 which supported generators for Forms 4.5 Designer 2 which supported generators for Forms 4.5 and 5 After this point the version numbers were changed to be in line with Oracle Developer Designer 6 which supported generators for Forms 4.5, 5 and 6. Designer 6i - the pre-release version number was 6.5. The production release was changed to 6i to keep in sync with the Oracle Developer version name Designer 9i Designer 10gR2 (10.1.2.6) – this was the last release of Designer


Publications

* * * * * * * {{cite book , last = Kramm , first = Mark , title = Oracle Designer , publisher = Prentice Hall PTR , location = Upper Saddle River , year = 2000 , isbn = 0-13-015343-5


References


External links


Tutorial for Designer/2000

Oracle Designer Tutorial: Creating an Oracle Database
Elizabeth Gallas,
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been operat ...
, November 2, 2000.
PDF Version
Oracle Designer Tutorial: Creating an Oracle Database

Fast Track Design and Development with Oracle Designer 6i
Oracle software