Re: Forms4: Cursor or Record Group?

In article <764115560snz_at_gjw1992.demon.co.uk> gjwalker_at_gjw1992.demon.co.uk (Gary John Walker) writes:

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There are a number of uses for and advantages of using record groups.

Record groups can be used as the basis of a list of values. These record groups can be populated just once, whenever the programmer desires through calls to the record group functions, or each time the list of values is instantiated. Thus, you can increase the flexibility of lists of values using record groups:

• Populate it just once the first time it is used or on application startup for relatively static lists, improving performance. This could be used very beneficially for things like validations for things like area code, state code, etc., which almost never change, but may change if your business changes (i.e. the phone company adds a new area code, or you open an office in Guam) -- and with this approach you simply change the base table for the list instead of changing, recompiling, testing, and distributing a new version of your program!
• Populate the record group using user exit calls to integrate non-database data.
• Pass the record group to Oracle Graphics to create a chart without going to the database -- and possibly charting data which doesn't or shouldn't be applied to the database (at least not yet -- "what if" scenarios for example).
• Pass the record group to Oracle Reports to create a report as above for Oracle Graphics.

There are many other uses, but I hope this helps ...

• Dennis Moore, my own opinions, etcetcetc