Re: Any recommendable books about Forms ?

Jan Gelbrich wrote:

> Hi, Daniel,
>
> at least thank You for this confirmation =( ...
> I also received mail responses to my question, they say the same. Really a
> pity !
>
> Please keep this NG informed about Your coming class. Unfortunately, it is
> almost sure that I may not be able
> to attend it. Do You already have a curriculum ? What would it cover ?
>
> And, do You plan to make Your notes available to this community, too ?
> It needs not to be for free, I think I and more people would pay for a
> useful book ...
>
> Yours, Jan
>
> "Daniel Morgan" <dmorgan_at_exesolutions.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:3DAC2E91.AA330B23_at_exesolutions.com...
> > Jan Gelbrich wrote:
> >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I would like to ask some experienced Forms developers if there is some
> > > *actual* and *useful*
> > > literature about Forms and Reports, that could also be helpful for
> > > *intermediates* ?
> > > Some books that explain how Forms and Reports really works, and how
> things
> > > can be done ?
> > >
> > > I have two books from Oracle Press, and I am not satisfied with them,
> they
> > > cover just some
> > > basics, and mostly they say *that* you can do this and that, but not
> exactly
> > > *how*, and no tips
> > > about be-awares and traps that You can fall in very quickly ... e.g.
> mixing
> > > up system modes in Forms
> > > or Groups and Frames in Reports. I miss the do´s and dont´s.
> > >
> > > Then I have the book from Bulushu Lakshman, which is still too high for
> me
> > > in many cases - the other extreme.
> > >
> > > The online manuals do not satisfy me either, it is like "here you have
> > > 10.000 bricks, go on build yourself a house ...".
> > >
> > > I have been searching for a long time, and there was nothing in my
> sight.
> > > Even O´Reilly has nothing...
> > >
> > > I would very much appreciate Your advices.
> > >
> > > Jan
> >
> > IM-less-than-HO. No!
> >
> > And if I have the time this coming Spring when I teach the Forms Class at
> the
> > University of Washington ... I am going to write one during the class.
> >
> > The current books, even when the contents are good, suffer from an index
> that is
> > about as useful as a dictionary in which the words are in random order.
> >
> > Daniel Morgan
> >

This will be the second year the class is taught and I have the curriculum pretty well developed. There is a possibility that some of it can be made available on the web but to do so would require university approval.

So a book (as though I had a lot of spare time to write one) is the best option.

But as a pointer ... I do not teach forms the way Oracle and others do. My feeling is that the way Forms is usually presented results in people learning lots of bad habits that they may or may not unlearn later. The best approach to forms is to study object oriented concepts such as inheritance and polymorphism and to think in terms of defining classes of objects (complete with trigger code) that can be inherited into the final application.

The class subjects, in no particular order, are:

Installation and configuration of Developer Suite The development environment (Object Navigator, Property Palette, Layout Editor, PL/SQL Editor)
The building blocks available such as windows, canvases, data blocks, alerts, LOVs, etc.
We connect data blocks to tables, views, and procedures We load binary objects into BLOB fields (JPG, WAV) and dis(play) them And spend a lot of time working with the most generally utilized triggers and properties

If you are interested contact escott_at_ese.washington.edu.

Daniel Morgan Received on Wed Oct 16 2002 - 17:23:33 CEST