Re: Menu Driven Applications in Designer/Developer 2000

Assuming that you have done your homework and documented your business functions, data model, etc. in Designer - you can generate a menu-driven application quite easily. The key to using Designer is understanding how the preferences work in conjunction with object libraries and your template to give you the GUI you want. Most developers who are used to Oracle Developer tend to give up on the generators way too early - usually because they don't understand just how much control they do have over their interface. It just seems "faster" to do it the way they always have - and it might be - initially. The real payoff in Designer comes down the road in the maintenance that really accounts for about 60% of an application's life-cycle cost.

I have to agree that the default Forms menu, etc is awful...and that's why I make the adjustments in Designer's preferences and Design Editor to create a menu that looks and works the way *I* want it to. It's quite possible and it's getting easier all the time with the new tools. If you have a specific question, I'd be happy to help if I can.

Additionally, if you DO decide that you want a more complicated GUI (or the user's are demanding it...<g>)...the changes can now (with 2.1.1+) be made in Developer and saved. The next time you generate the module, you just ask that the layout of your existing FMB be used - this will re-generate your Form with your latest modifications AND include your layout. (The only place this wouldn't hold is if you went from a single or multiple-record group layout - and then decided you needed the *other* one. Otherwise, everything you decide upon will come over - including boilerplate (now called "graphic") text which you have added to your Form.)

Hope this helps a little,

Chana

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Thu Apr 15 1999 - 08:30:31 CEST