Displaying sparsely populated tables

Is there a standard method for displaying all records of a sparsely populated table with blank entries interspersed?

Suppose I want to keep track of appointments which can be made on the hour. I have an appointment table with date/time and customer columns. I want to store only appointments in the table, but I would like to display a scrollable register of hourly entries with the customer name filled in for appointments and blank otherwise. I also want to be able to scroll beyond the first and last appointments.

I'm using Oracle 6.0 with SQL*Forms 3.0 and PL/SQL 1.0 under DOS 5.0 on a PC compatible. This is my first Oracle application, and I'm just getting familiar with SQL*Forms. I thought I could do it with PL/SQL triggers by faking a scrolled region, but neither PL/SQL nor SQL*Forms supports arrayed variables.

Can this be done in SQL*FORMS with PL/SQL triggers, or will I have to resort to PRO*C or PRO*Pascal user exits?

Is there anything in the next version of Oracle which might help development of such an application?

Please email to me and I'll summarize.

Thanks,

Norm Hoffman
nghoff_at_bb1t.monsanto.com Received on Mon Nov 30 1992 - 05:29:49 CET