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Oracle Tips & Oracle Hints
- DATABASE DOCUMENTATION
By R. Robin Quasebarth - Keep Database up to date in Designer 2000. It has a wealth of Reports that save months in documentation (that everyone should do, but never does). And to be able to hand a new Developer or DBA a Data Diagram or Entity Relationship Diagram is how the world should be.
- DESIGNER 2000
By R. Robin Quasebarth - I love the tool but I wouldn't bother trying to generate Forms and Reports. Nor would I try to reverse engineer Forms and Reports.
- ATTRIBUTES FOR ENTITIES
By R. Robin Quasebarth - Remember not to create Attributes for Entities that are derived from a Foreign Key. You will end up with extra Columns when you map over to Tables.
- PARAMETER FORM
By R. Robin Quasebarth - If you make reports that you think will end up on the WEB, go ahead and make your own Parameter form in an Oracle Form. The Reports parameter form does not work the same. I have an application that is mostly WEB but there are a couple of CLIENT/Novell SERVER installations at some sites due to network issues outside of my control. To make the app work both ways with no adjusting of code, don't depend on the Reports parameter form.
- ROOT WINDOW
By R. Robin Quasebarth - Don't name a Form Window ROOT_WINDOW if you are going to the WEB. I debugged some weird stuff in a WEB application and it all came down to ROOT_WINDOW and the WEB not using a Midi window.
- FORMS DOCS
By R. Robin Quasebarth - In Forms 4.5, the text readable version is Forms Doc. It is not as complete as the old .INP files. Forms Doc does not include Program Units such as Functions and Procedures. That is pretty lame when you are debugging someone else's code. Then along came Forms 5.0...Oracle just changed the name from Forms Doc to Object List Report (took me a while to find that one). It remained lamely incomplete. Then FINALLY in Forms 6.0 the Object List Report is a good thing and include the Program Units. I am not sure what took so long on that one.
- PERFORMANCE TWEAKING
September 13, 1999 - By R. Robin Quasebarth - Now that there is OPEN_FORM and NEW_FORM use them to improve performance in many instances. Also, what used to be a Block is now a reusable form that can be called from elsewhere in the application. When opening a form via the web you don't want to drag along unnecessary blocks that may not even be needed by a user with little bandwidth.
- RELATIONSHIP MAINTENANCE
By R. Robin Quasebarth - Use the relationship of a block instead of all the other clever ways to make a Master Block. This aids in maintainability as well as writes efficient code, adds to the code when other blocks are added as children. Also, when you delete a relationship it take all the pertinent code with....cleans itself up.
- Maintainability
By R. Robin Quasebarth - For ease of maintainability, use Table names for base table Block names in forms when possible.
- FONT SUBSTITUTION
By R. Robin Quasebarth - For cross platform portability (including WEB) use Arial 8 and you are pretty safe when it comes to font substitution.
- UNDERSTANDING DATABASE DESIGN
By R. Robin Quasebarth - To be an excellent developer, you must understand database design. Get a solid foundation in CASE methodologies so that when someone hands you an Entity Relationship diagram you know what's going on. Much the way a great musician may be handed a score of music and he is fluent.
- OPEN_FORM... RESTRICTED?
By R. Robin Quasebarth - Oracle Forms 4.5
If you think OPEN_FORM is unrestricted just because it is not on the restricted list...don't be fooled. You may have seen somewhere that it is only restricted in Query Mode. Hah!!! Well, don't expect it to work in a WHEN-VALIDATE-ITEM trigger because you will get a message that it is a restricted procedure that can not be used in that type of trigger.
Want a work-around? Use your WHEN-VALIDATE-ITEM trigger but instead of using OPEN_FORM when a validation fails, use a SET_TIMER. Set the timer for a second or less. Then follow with a WHEN-TIMER-EXPIRED trigger that then does the OPEN_FORM call.
OPEN_FORM is great because you can use it when you are running separate sessions with full commit functionality for each form running. Loving it...looks like a great enhancement for user-friendliness when building front-ends.
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