Re: forms 5 to forms 6 conversion

From: John Alexander <jalexander_at_summitsoftwaredesign.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 02:47:35 GMT
Message-ID: <b7Uz5.4240$h_.386117_at_typhoon.tampabay.rr.com>


There are some issues. Which ones you encounter depend largely on which features in Developer you are using, the database version (7.3 is especially problematic and SLOW with Dev 6) and what platform you are on.

When converting your forms, some areas where you should pay special attention:

  • Look at the fonts. There are cases where the fonts looked correct when first calling a form, but after traversing several other forms, and then calling the form again, the fonts were different. This is caused by only specifying some of the font properties - the fix is to specify all font properties or none of them.
  • Report formats can change slightly. In some cases, the field size will shrink, so data that displayed ok previously is now truncated.
  • Key mappings - make sure any custom key mappings still work, including from within your LOVs.

One other suggestion would be to apply the latest patch (I think patch 7 is the latest) up-front, as you will probably end up needing them all by the time the conversion is complete, and this way you don't have to struggle with the errors first.

I've been a part of several conversions to 6.0, and both were 95% clean, but the last 5% took time to find and fix. I don't think it is advisable to conevrt and go straight to production. There are differences and bugs, so testing is needed.

Here is a link to an article with some more information (although it deals with conversion from Forms 4.5 to 6.0):
http://www.summitsoftwaredesign.com/articles/article2.html

John Alexander
www.SummitSoftwareDesign.com

SDG <simong_at_explor.co.uk> wrote in message news:w%Kz5.133$p4.17109_at_newsr1.u-net.net...
> Hello people,
>
> I soon will have the task of migrating some forms version 5 to 6. Is it a
> case of just recompiling or are there some issues I should be aware of ?
>
> Thanks in anticipation
>
>
>
>
Received on Tue Sep 26 2000 - 04:47:35 CEST

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