Oracle Forms - PL/SQL Libraries

To convert PL/SQL Libraries to an XML format, it's easiest to use the convert command that comes with the Report Builder. With this command called rwconverter, we define the source type, call the source, and define the destination type and the destination.

In this way, we have control over the way we need to convert the original .pll file to a .pld flat file that we can upload into the APEX Forms converter. It is possible to convert the PL/SQL Libraries with the convert option in Forms Builder, but, personally, I think this option works better. The rwconverter command has a few parameters we give with it to execute. They are given as follows:

• stype: This is the type of source file we need to convert. In our situation, this will be a .pll file and so the value we need to set is pllfile.
• source: This is the name of the source file, including the extension. In our case, it is wizard.pll.
• dtype: This is the file type we want to convert our source file to. In our case, it is a .pld file and so the value becomes pldfile.
• dest: This is the name, including the extension, of the destination file. In our case, it is wizard.pld.

In our example, we use the wizard.pll file that's in our summit files directory. This PL/SQL Library that contains.pll files is normally used to create a PL/SQL Library in the Oracle Database. But this time, we will use it to create a .pld flat file that we will upload to APEX.

First, we change the directory to work directory which has the original .pll file. In our case, we summit the directory directly under the C drive, shown as follows:
C:>cd C:summit

After this, we call rwconverter in the command prompt as shown here:
C:summit> rwconverter stype=pllfile source=wizard.pll dtype=pldfile dest=wizard.pld

When you press the Enter key, a screen will open that is used to do the conversion. We will see that the types and names of the files are the same as we entered them in the command line. We need to click on the OK button to convert the file from .pll to .pld.

The conversion may take a few seconds, but when the file has been converted we will see a confirmation that the conversion was successful. After this, we can look in the C:summit directory and we will see that a file wizard.pld is created.