Xbase to Dev/2000: Argh!

Can anybody help a die-hard Fox/Dbase programmer cope with this _thing_ they call Developer/2000 (in particular Forms 4.5)? It seems I spend more time circumventing the normal forms behavior, than I do actually writing code to make it perform the way I want. If there were a nice way to write some conventional top-down code, with complete control over all the screen/keyboard functions, rather than finding the correct triggers (which may not exist for my purposes) which put code into predefined places and act differently depending on modes, navigation methods, etc.. I would have been done weeks ago. Why should I have to plug in the same code in 10 different triggers (or call a procedure 10 times, where 9 out of 10 times it would rarely be appropriate)?

I spend a significant amount of time writing redundant kludges and finding a place to put those damn kludges, than I would had I been able to write it in 5% of the time using Foxpro.

I'm not knocking the database itself, but there has to be a better way to write apps for Oracle. This is pathetic. In my other database languages, there was nothing I "could not do". Even after speaking to experienced oracle programmers, they say what I'm trying to do is impossible. Now I *used* to be the little-engine-that-could, so its very frustrating when you're told "it can't be done (or at least not gracefully and easily)" or "not with this version of Oracle", or "you used to be able to do that".

If you came from Xbase, how did you learn to cope with Dev/2000? Any constructive criticism or thoughts would be welcomed! I'm not usually a raving, whining, lunitic, but I may be soon! Any recomendations on books that teach "style" and methods would be grateful. I probably have them all, just a case of info overload probably. This is really a serious request. <sigh>.

Thanks.

-Steve

(not to mention how INCONSISTENT Oracle is, where do the semicolons go, when not, when a semicolon, when a slash, when is it two words (end if), when is it just one (elseif), when to use a colon, when not to ??? ...OK, now I'm ranting) Received on Mon Jan 20 1997 - 00:00:00 CET