Re: HELP! Forms 2.3 to 3.0

s8930421_at_valiant.vut.EDU.AU (Steven Smith) writes:

> I'm having one or two problems in converting V2.3 forms to V3 forms
> using the convert program that comes with forms 3. [...]
> Some of the specific errors encountered have been
> truncation warning messages and forms 3 not being very specific about
> errors which occur in triggers (usually only the trigger name is
> given).

We came across two sorts of truncation issues. One concerned fields whose width was shorter than the data being displayed in them, which under Forms 2 resulted in silent truncation of the data whereas Forms 3 generates a warning. I think you have to dive into the forms here: either use PL/SQL to assign a value to SYSTEM.MESSAGE_LEVEL to suppress warning messages, or increase the width of the affected fields.

Much more irritating for us was the fact that the Load option in the Forms 3 designer interface will sometimes silently truncate long lines in the INP file which is being loaded.

We had many Version 2 trigger steps with long lines of text in them; after passing the Version 2 INP files through the CONVFORM utility, these long lines became even longer in the Version 3 INP file because of the indentation added by CONVFORM. Loading this Version 3 INP file into Forms would then sometimes truncate these long lines.

If you're lucky, the truncated (Version 2 style) trigger step will be syntactically illegal and you'll get a runtime error when you execute the generated form. If you're unlucky, the truncation will occur immediately after the ";" terminating a Version 2 style macro function code, and the truncated trigger step will be syntactically correct but the form will execute incorrectly (the effect, of course, depending on which macro function codes have been stripped from the affected trigger step).

We dealt with this by the following algorithm:

1. Pass the Version 2 INP file through CONVFORM, to create a Version 3 INP file as output (call it file 3-A).
2. Load file 3-A into Forms and generate the application. This produces the Version 3 FRM file plus the accompanying INP file (call it file 3-B).
3. Now compare files 3-A and 3-B to see if they're identical. If not, one or more trigger steps in file 3-B have probably been truncated (at least, that was the only reason for the differences we found). In this case edit the Version 2 INP file to reformat the long trigger step lines and repeat from step 1.

Good luck.

David Hazledine                                                EMBL Data Library
Database Administrator                                                PF 10.2209
EMBL Data Library                                      69012 Heidelberg, Germany

Internet: Hazledine_at_EMBL-Heidelberg.DE