Re: My Issues with Forms 4.5

From: Thomas R Skinner <trskin_at_gil.com.au>
Date: 1997/09/14
Message-ID: <341c4bc5.563310_at_news.ipswich.gil.com.au>#1/1

rickluce_at_aol.com (Rickluce) wrote:

>We are currently considering migrating all of our 3.0 forms to forms 4.5.
>The main reasons are to achieve Year 2000 compatibility as soon as possible
>and to position ourselves to be compatible with future Oracle releases. To
>reduce the development effort, we plan to continue running in character mode.
>
>I chose the term "migrating" because, in some ways, I don't consider this
>to be an upgrade. The binary file format (*.fmb) has major drawbacks in
>that it does not allow developers to search through the source code to
>evaluate the impacts of database design changes. Furthermore, the binary
>*.fmb files prevent code merging thus making concurrent development impossible.
>
>I was wondering how others are dealing with these problems.

I find that strong drink helps.
Seriously, 4.5 gives more programmer control that 3.0 For example,
1) 4.5 allows procedure code to be shared between forms through libraries, and other features through referenced forms. 2) you can intercept all errors and messages, funnel them through one procedure and have an alert box popup that automatically (no programming) word wraps the text.
3) You can turn field entry on or off, conceal fieldss, alter the where clause on a block, keep track of the last query entered by the user.
4) You can generate a text (*.fmt) version that can be searched - but the syntax is very different

On the negative side, be prepared for problems with

1) terminal defintions
2) the 'character mode error message' ie core dumps
3) seperation of development environments eg we develop  under Win  95

but run under Solaris - the same form may act differently in the two environments, not to mention the physical effort in constant filee transfers
4) finding a graphical font that approximates character, to get the 'look' of the screen in the layout editor.

Good Luck!! You will need it
Regards
Thomas R Skinner
Allgas Energy Ltd
('Fixed in the next release') Received on Sun Sep 14 1997 - 00:00:00 CEST