Re: Developer 1.3 and Windows NT 3.51

Umberto Pace wrote:
>
> Has anyone tested Developer 1.3 on Windows 3.51?
> Is it fully compatible? And what about forms written under
> old 16-bit Developer?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Umberto Pace

Evaluation of Oracle Developer/2000 Rel 1.3

Included on the CD are installs for both NT and Win95. I tried the NT install on my system. It installs in
the C:\ORANT directory. So you don’t have to delete version 1.2 from your system which is in the
C:\ORAWIN directory. That is if you can handle about 400MB of files. You will need to keep some of 1.2
around of you are using any 16 bit SQL Net tools. I found that the 16 Bit ODBC driver uses 16 Bit SQL
Net and therefore the Access app I am developing couldn’t connect until I reinstalled 16 bit SQL Net. So
far the two (1.2 & 1.3) coexist well on my system.

First off I got an error while installing. The installer tried to install a windows dll (CTL3D32.DLL) that was in use. I called Oracle and their looking into it. Amusing side note, the customer support database was
down so the TAR giver couldn’t give me a TAR number????

  Oracle called back on the install problem. Seems others are having problems also. They recommend
closing all running Apps. before installing 1.3. TAR# 9472615.6. BUG# 369486.

I ignored the above error and continued with the install. The rest went all right. While I installed (about 30 minutes) I read the release notes. I was confused about which version it’s talking about. It talked about the new 4.5.6 release (this one is 4.5.7.0.10). It seems to be almost the same as the 1.2 release notes.

And in the notes was mention of a patch. This will bring the version up to 4.5.7.0.11. I installed it in hopes of fixing the VBX problem but was no help.

Can’t seem to run VBX’s. I regenerated the Grading form and got an error about the NT kernal not a valid
NT image??? Oracle is looking into this (as soon as the DB is back up).  I didn’t try the Win95 version.

  Oracle called back on the second problem (can't open a VBX control, TAR# 9472630.6). As explained
in the FAX they sent me, Rel. 1.3 does NOT support VBX's. They explain that "VBX's are a 16 bit
mechanism, and as such are only supported on 16 bit ports". This is odd since the release notes go on
and on about how simple it is to use VBX's. And there still is a VBX button in the layout editor for
adding a VBX to a form.  

Can’t believe they could make the source editor worse, but they managed it (NT version). Some of the list
boxes are so small its very hard to select anything. No new features were added that I could see. There is a new twist to searching. Searching for package names depends on whether there is a comment before the line
containing ‘PACKAGE ...’. If you include a C style comment (/* ... */ starting on the first line, the search
will not find the package name if your search is not spelled in the same case. Example:

/* Package Spec */
PACKAGE PACKAGENAME IS
....

A search for ‘packagename’ would not find this one. Even if ‘Case Sensitive’ is not checked. You
would have to search for ‘PACKAGENAME’. Change the comment in line one to ‘--’ style and the
search works fine. And of course removing the comment fixes it too.

The debugger is just as worthless as in previous releases.

Opening the Canvas editor on some canvas's locks up the developer (NT version). Just a few, 3 of the 9 in
the form I tested caused the developer to lock up. TAR# 9474066.5.

  Oracle was able to reproduce the problem. They tell me it is only a problem in the NT version. The
Win95 version does not have this problem. BUG# 369617. I asked to be put on the list to get the
patch as soon as it's out. The reply was "What List?". So I'll have to call and call until they get a patch
made.

The Win95 version is much better than the NT version. It does not have the canvas editor bug. And the
source editor works correctly. The only thing wrong that I saw is the same lack of support of VBX's and
limited OCX support as the NT release. But the Win95 version is very resource hungry. I was having
trouble running it on a Pentium 133 with 16MB Ram and 30MB free HD space. The hard drive was
trashing quite heavily. I cleaned up the hard disk to 100MB free which helped out quite a bit. But still just as quick as on my Pentium 60 with 32MB running NT with a 100 swap file.  I suspect 32MB of ram is
required to run in Win95.

We did give OCX’s a try. I talked with the folks who we bought the tab VBX from and sure enough they
had an OCX version. We downloaded it from their web site. I couldn't install it because Forms has no
facility to register OCX's. We were able to register it with Visual C/C++. We could place the OCX in a
form. But we can't figure out how to use it.  

  TAR# 9476263.6. The answer from Oracle is your on your own with OCX's. The next release of
Dev/2000 (rel 2.0) should have full support of OCX's. I closed the TAR.  (That made them happy).

It turns out that OCX's are only partially supported. You have to read the release notes very carefully.
There is contradicting information in the file. Section 4.16.1 states that you can insert an OCX object in the form, but you can only set properties. And no triggers are supported for OCX's. So a tab OCX is useless in
this release. There is mention that in Rel 2.0 all this will be added.  So I rewrote my Form to use buttons
and display items to simulate tabs. It works like tabs but doesn't quite look as nice.

In my 1.2 App. I used the Window API functions to read and write an INI file. I was using the ORA_FFI
package to call these functions. Well the name and functionality of these functions has changed. It turns out that I need to flush the INI file buffer and to do this I need to call the function with null pointers. ORA_FFI does not support null pointers. In order to use the 32 bit INI API's I would have to write a userexit dll.
That would require installing Visual C/C++. And from what I hear, userexits don't work that well (Oracle
customer support has 2 phone menu options devoted to userexits). So I rewrote the INI file functionality by
using the TEXT_IO package. It's not as nice as INI files but it gets the job done. TAR# 9482103.4.

It turns out that the developer command line option Purgepus=yes (that cured some of the problems with
corrupted forms) causes the developer to crash. Remove this option! I just hope they fixed the problem that
Purgepus was there to fix.

The default Forms date format is now DD-MON-YYYY. Previously it was DD-MON-YY. The cure for
the year 2000 I suspect. You may to widen fields that display dates.

In the release notes and the Forms help it talks about the settings in the ORACLE.INI file. It also says that this version (NT and Win95) uses the registry. It seems to be using the registry and not the INI file. There
are entries in the registry (LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/ORACLE) and no INI file to be found. So
where it says INI, substitute Registry.

The release notes talks about the new return values of the Get_Application_Property. It now returns new values for NT and Win95. This is NOT documented in the Forms help. I have tested it and it does work as
per the release notes.

More fun with release notes. Chapters 7.3 and 7.4 talk about how to increase memory and reduce GPF’s.
They are talking about Win 3.11. This doesn’t apply to NT or Win95. Ignore these chapters.

The mystery continues. It is now known that Rel 1.3 does NOT support VBX’s (Solution ID 2066126.6).
Nowhere in the release notes does it state this. Instead it goes on and on about how to use them. Ignore the
following chapters: 3.3 (concerning VBX’s), 5.1.3, 7.35, 7.36, 10.2, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6. And ignore the VBX
button in the canvas editor. But DO read 4.16.1 about OCX’s.

Can’t seem to set the bevel of display items in the NT version. In my situation I noticed that display items
displayed as lowered in the NT version while they showed as raised in the Win95 version. I was able to
open the NT canvas editor (luckily it didn’t lockup) and check the bevel settings. They were set to raised in
both the canvas editor and the property window. Yet when run in NT the display item is shown as lowered.
Seems to work correctly in Win95. Received on Fri Sep 13 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST