Re: Forms 6i Debugging Practices

I do not know of any book about Oracle Forms that I would recommend. Lulushi's is the best of those I have.

Learning Oracle requires more than one book, the help files, the example code and some experimentation. Books tend to be written early in the product beta cycle and are often sketchy.

Forms help contains mistakes; for example, the hierarchical tree became an object type, but the sample in 6.0 is about an older way of building it which not only doesn't work, but the PLL library is protected so it can't be made to work.

Errors are often only indirectly related to the cause of the problem, and not precisely localized.

Some problems are only detected at run time, such as wrong names for data items in a block. Search does not cover every part of the source code, omitting the properties, for example.

Some tips:

Build the tables first, so you can use the wizards to create data blocks. After linking tables test the default behaviour and only make necessary changes.

If you delete and recreate a table, refresh its data block.

Watch out for the default "automatic" setting in frames, which will undo any nicely prepared layout unless you change it to "manual" before changing the data layout.

There are runtime parameters to trace the execution of the program; but it generates lots of output which is difficult to interpret. Try to use the fewest steps to cause a problem if you use it.

ifrun60 myform record=collect log=c:\temp\mytrace.txt

In Form Builder, Tools, Preferences, Runtime, you can check "debug messages" on. This will sometimes help you find the trigger that contains a problem, by firing a message at the start of every trigger.

Build and test your form incrementally, so you know exactly what just changed when a problem happens. Try not to make too many changes at once. When a form with a consistent set of changes is stable, make a backup.

For complex changes, try them in isolation in a separate form with the fewest possible features, then copy all the changes.

Good luck,
Mike Rainville

Greg Brown wrote:

>Does anyone have a book or paper that could
>help me in the forms 6i debugging process.
>
>Often times, I get errors that appear cryptic
>or not applicable to the actual error at hand.
>
>I am fairly new with forms but have a good grasp of SQL.
>
>Thanks
>
>
Received on Wed Mar 19 2003 - 21:15:06 CET