Re: Opinion of Forms

Hi Robert,

I agree that Forms (Dev2k) must be much better than it is :)

But I like this tool as you like it :) And I hope my followed remarks will help you to solve some problems you mentioned...

rtproffitt_at_my-dejanews.com wrote:
<snip>
> Examples: a. Alerts only
> allow access to title and message; colors, numbers of buttons, which ones are
> enabled, etc. are all not available. Foxpro and visual basic have
> MessageBox, very powerful, flexible functionality.

You can use your own modal windows as alerts. But usualy it is enough to use a few number predefined alerts with others colors, buttons and so on.

> b. Reports apparently
> does not allow access to the FileName property for "queries from an external
> file". Therefore, the developer is forced to hard code filenames and cannot
> provide flexibility or use unique, dynamic filenames...or is forced to make
> separate but similar reports, which goes against the whole reusability
> thing...

You cannot change the file's name dynamicaly but you can try to change the content of the file dynamicaly...

<snip>
> c. Try to create a hard coded list of
> parameters. The object for adding parameters does not have any delete
> capability. If you make a mistake, you will have to delete the entire object,
> then recreate it and recreate the list just to avoid having an empty or blank
> line in the popup.

You can use Ctrl-Shift-< to delete any unnecessary List elements at design time

> d. Our DBA tried to generate scripts from Designer 2000.
> The scripts were incorrect. She had used the "generate" function from the
> menu. She was told this was a known bug. To get the proper result, she had
> to highlight the desired tables, right click for a small menu, and pick
> "generate" off of that menu. Thus the same command from two different places
> did not work right...[to me, that is just plain bad coding] .... many
> others...

I've never seen that problem but Designer/2000 2.1.2 has hundreds of fixed bugs already :)

>
> 3. Quirks and Outright Crashes
> a. Tool gets confused and won't compile perfectly good code:
> says "internal error". Close and reopen the file and it compiles OK.

We use Program->Compile->All each time we open form module before we made any changes in it. It helps.

<snip>
>
> 4. Arrays. Other languages have simple easy to use array declarations. Not
> so in forms or PL/SQL. The only thing coming close is a PL/SQL Table, which
> is cludgy to code and use. We "invented" a methodology using globals that
> works like arrays, simply and easily, but it has its limitations.
>
> 5. Globals. All globals are strings, maximum 255. WHY?
> There are legitimate needs for global variables, like persistence,
> passing parameters to multiple forms in an easy way, etc. Other
> languages have powerful globals.

We use variables in the packages (including PL/SQL tables) to solve the limitations of Globals.

<snip>
>
> 9. In their attempt to 'HELP' the user by 'doing a lot behind the scenes'
> they end up limiting the developre. Example: App checks data blocks and
> automatically determines when to update or insert and commit. Very powerful.

> But if you have a situation where you manually update and commit, the commit
> will be intercepted and there will be an error: Nothing to commit.

In that case you can use Forms_DDL('COMMIT') built-in instead of COMMIT or COMMIT_FORM.
> You are
> forced to be ingenious or to force a block to become "dirty" JUST so the app
> will see it and do the right thing you already told it to do (commit) in the
> first place....So you have to go OUT of your way to do things that are very
> natural, even in their own back end PL/SQL...they 'helped' too much.
>
> ...many more .... need I go on?

Hope it was helpful :)

If you have any other problems with Dev2k let me know and I'll try my best to help :) By the way I want to know about any problems with Dev2k...

Thank you.

>

<snip>

Good Luck.

-- 
Valeri Sorokine
ProSoft, Russia, Moscow, Information Systems Division
Phone: +7 (095) 234 0636 (6 lines) FAX: +7 (095) 234 0640
E-mail: vsorokin_at_dd.ru OR vsorokin_at_prosoft.ru
http://www.dd.ru