In my previous post on Java Web Start I outlined the required EBS patches and basic cofiguration for Windows end users. But after one of our partners tried to connect to our EBS demo instance from a Mac it turned out that some additional steps are required for MacOS users. So this article will help to get JWS running on MacOS.

References

Using Java Web Start with Oracle E-Business Suite (Doc ID 2188898.1)
Oracle E-Business Suite Release Notes for Apple macOS Clients, Release 12 (Doc ID 1533334.1)
Safari 12 Does Not Support Java Plug-in (Doc ID 2467140.1)

Environment

Operating System: MacOS Big Sur
Browser: Safari 14.0.1

Configuration

Apply EBS patches

Make sure that all MacOS required patches from Doc ID 2188898.1 and my previous post are applied. Please also note that there are two types of patches in Doc ID 2188898.1: “Big Sur and Earlier” and “Catalina and Earlier”. I advise to install the patches for the newer MacOS version Big Sur.

Java installation

Download JRE 8 using the following link.

According to the Doc ID 2188898.1 Minimum JRE Release for macOS Big Sur and earlier clients is JRE 8 Update 301.
I downloaded the latest JRE 8 Update 321.

JRE 8 download macOS

Open the downloaded file and follow the prompts to install JRE.

JRE 8 download macOS 2
JRE 8 installation security prompt
JRE 8 installation
JRE 8 installation 2
JRE 8 installation 3

Firefox installation

Now if you try to launch a form, e.g. Blitz Report from our EBS demo using Safari, you will only get the following page.

Open jnlp safari MacOS

The reason of this is that Safari is not supported with JWS according to Doc ID 2188898.1. The only supported browser is Firefox ESR. You can download and install Firefox 78.15.0esr using the following link.

Download Firefox 78,15.0 esr for MacOS
Download Firefox 78,15.0 esr for MacOS 2

Use the following instructions for the installation.

Test opening forms

After Firefox is installed you can finally launch forms. But if you run MacOS Big Sur or later you may hit the following issue:

“Unrecognized file type: /Users//Downloads/frmservlet”

Open jnlp firefox MacOS
Open jnlp firefox MacOS

I found several discussions of that issue:

https://community.oracle.com/mosc/discussion/4506536/frmservlet-no-file-extension
https://ittone.ma/ittone/oracle-forms-will-not-open-after-i-updated-my-mac-to-big-sur-get-a-java-error-unrecognized-filetype-frmsevlet/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252671579
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252671765
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/670905?login=true&page=1#702538022

There is no solution but only a workaround

Open jnlp file in terminal using the command:

javaws ~/Downloads/frmservlet

To automate this task, you can create a script open_forms.command on the Desktop. Here’s the contents of the script:

#!/bin/bash
filename=`ls -tr ~/Downloads/frmservlet*|tail -1`
javaws $filename

Add execution permissions to the script:

chmod +x open_forms.command

Now after downloading frmservlet from EBS double-click the script and it will open the form without terminal.

Open jnlp firefox MacOS 3
Open jnlp firefox MacOS 4

You can also rename the downloaded file and add .jnlp extension which is removed by the operating system. Then you can double click on the file to launch it. But the terminal solutions seems to be easier to me.

Please let me know in the comments if this post helped you or you faced any difficulties – I will help you.

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