Reasons for using FoReDoclet

Good technical documentation saves a lot of money if an application has to be developed over a longer period of time. Since most of the applications are like this (applications used in a productive environment have to adapt to changes in the environment), we can clearly declare that quality technical documentation is a MUST for every larger application. There are a lot of reasons why FoReDoclet should be used as a way of producing detailed technical documentation for Oracle Forms projects. We collected some of them in the following sections.

Missing physical design/technical specification

It very often happens, that due to time constraints, the limited size of the project or insufficient human resources, detailed technical specification is not produced prior to the implementation (programming) phase of a project. Without the detailed physical design documentation, only well structured and well documented source code may ensure that the implemented software will be maintainable after the original authors leave the company. If the source code is commented properly and the adequate level of technical overview is provided, FoReDoclet can cost-effectively produce the necessary technical documentation which enables the cheap and efficient maintenance of an Oracle Forms based application.

The physical design documentation is not equal to the technical documentation of a software product

Even if a software product is physically designed, the design documents often don't include (cannot include) a lot of implementation details which play an important part in the later maintenance of the software (special data management operations, navigation tricks, hidden fields/blocks...etc.). This is especially important when the user interface and its programming is complex.

Reference documentation for libraries

When a software module is not an end-user application but rather a library type of core module with a lot of PL/SQL functions, procedures and packages, the programmers using the library need clearly structured, quickly navigable reference documentation instead of the logical and physical documents which contain a lot of information irrelevant to their daily work. FoReDoclet can be perfectly used for generating this kind of reference documentation of core modules.

Extension type developments

Certain development projects - like extensions to Oracle Applications - are not often designed as thoroughly as standalone applications since most of the created code simply extends certain parts of a larger application. However, detailed technical documentation is a necessity in these cases as well, since later upgrades on the base system require the exact knowledge of extensions and their technical implementation in order to make them work with the new base system version as well. By using FoReDoclet, extension modules can be documented in the adequate detail and their maintenance can be done easily later on.