Matthew Brown wrote:One thing to remember - while there may be more specifically Java jobs than Oracle DB jobs, there are probably more people capable of doing them as well. And someone that can do both would be in a good position.
That's a good point, but it depends on the job market where you are.
I'm an experienced Oracle developer with some Java experience as well, but from what I've seen it can be quite difficult to break into Java development here in the UK, for example, because there are thousands of inexperienced Java developers around already, either recent college graduates or the thousands of relatively inexperienced developers who have been brought into the UK from lower wage countries in recent years. Employers don't necessarily want to pay for your Oracle skills if they're just hiring a Java developer, because they can get an inexperienced Java developer relatively easily/cheaply anyway. And if they do want to pay for your Oracle skills, it often means they really want you working on Oracle stuff rather than Java. So you may have to be prepared to lower your salary expectations in line with the skills/experience expected for a junior Java job.
Another factor to consider is that although there is certainly a wide demand for Java skills, the widespread focus on
JEE systems being "database agnostic" means that many companies no longer invest in database-specific skills or technology, and many architects and software designers no longer have much understanding or awareness of database technology, or indeed the difference between database administration and database application development.
In some places, this means nobody knows or cares much about taking advantage of the powerful tools available on the RDBMS, because they want to be able to swap out the DB easily, so they focus all their efforts on a pure Java solution. And there can be a tendency to assume that Java developers can pick up what little they need to know about databases, so why bother hiring (=paying for) people with more specialist DB skills? The relative abundance of inexperienced Java developers also means that in some cases people will use Java simply because those are the skills they already have available.
But on other sites, especially where people are dealing with serious volumes of data, you can find there is actually a greater demand for people who understand how to use the power of an enterprise RDBMS intelligently e.g. data warehousing, ETL, data migration, OLAP, and so on.
So I would say, definitely go ahead and learn Java and try to get some commercial experience with it - it's fun, it will introduce you to new ideas and technologies, and it will almost certainly be useful for your career. But also keep an eye on the broader job market and trends in the sectors where you want to work. My own impression is that there are certainly some parts of the industry where good database skills are almost becoming a "legacy" skillset, not because the technologies are obsolete but because their benefits are under-appreciated in an industry that is notoriously driven by techno-hype and swiftly changing fashions. So you could find your serverside DB skills are in greater demand than your Java skills.
Whatever you do, I would definitely look at breaking out of the Oracle Forms ghetto e.g. you could also try
APEX for a quick way to build web clients for Oracle applications without Java (yes, it is possible!). You can try this out online via Oracle's
hosted APEX environment and there's lots of tutorials on Oracle's website.
Either way:
SELECT 'Good luck!' FROM dual;
so go for it as you have some programming experience you will enjoy learning new APIs. Welcome to Java 
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