Order_id != Order_id in FOrms 4.0 ???

• Quoting Richard D Holowczak to All dated 10-19-94 ***
  > Please help me out with this one.
  > I have two tables, ORDERS and ORDER_DETAILS.
  > The Primary key in ORDERS is:
  > ORDER_NUMBER CHAR(40)
  > It is also a Foreign Key in ORDER_DETAILS.
  

> With these two blocks in Forms 4.0, the detail items
> can be inserted, but when I query the detail block,
> no records are found.

There is a good reason for this: by creating the ORDER_NUMBER with a sequence, you are most likely causing an implicit conversion from a numeric datatype to a character datatype. Forms 4.0, as you might expect, will be comparing character values to character values, where
'1' != ' 1' and
'1' != '1 '
As you have discovered, by causing another implicit datatype conversion to a numeric datatype, a numeric comparison is used, and 1 = 1.

This will cause problems not only with Forms, but any other tool you use, and is a VERY bad idea. Suggestions, in order of preference:

1. Use a numeric type in the database for numeric values. You will therefore be comparing numbers to numbers and get the results you expect.
2. Use the VARCHAR2 type (instead of CHAR) and perform EXPLICIT conversion so that the character values inserted are consistent.

> The same exact form under Forms 3.0 does not
> have this behaviour.

This indicates that trailing space is the most likely scenario; Forms 3.0 considered '1 ' = '1' because it does not understand the difference between CHAR and VARCHAR2 datatype. Forms 4.0 does, and '1 ' != '1', properly, for CHAR datatypes. (VARCHAR2 datatypes do not store trailing spaces, like the former CHAR datatype under v6.) Received on Sun Oct 23 1994 - 15:27:01 CET