Question

Has anyone used Forms 4.5/5.0 to build a 1 record/canvas form?

Asked by: frankr

We've got an Excel app we'd like to migrate to Forms (maybe 4.5, probably 5.0).  The existing app uses tabbed worksheets to display each record (a spread table, a graph, some misc. info), then has a summary worksheet that drills through all the detail sheet to come up with totals.

Basically, duplicating this would require that we build a form that creates a new canvas for each record.  Not sure this type of dynamically-defined canvasses is possible.  If, for a given master record, there were 10 detail records, each would be displayed on its own canvas (the tabbed canvas feature of 5.0 is why we think we'd probably do this in 5.0).  The user could flip through the detail records by selecting the tab.

Has anyone done anything like this?

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Asked On
1998-03-27 at 09:44:41ID10045103
Tags

forms

,

canvas

,

detail

Topic

Oracle Database

Participating Experts
2
Points
100
Comments
8

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Answers

 

by: petevdbPosted on 1998-03-29 at 13:54:23ID: 1082890

What you can build is a master detail relation ship where you define the detail block on a certain canvas. Then you mirror the items on different canvasses, you build a couple of buttons on the top of the screen, who will change the canvas and jump to another record.

I think that is certainly a solution for your application. Maybe there are more simple solutions.

Peter.

 

by: frankrPosted on 1998-03-30 at 08:02:35ID: 1082891

Peter, could you expand a little on the idea of 'mirror the items on different canvasses'?

By 'the items', are you referring to just the detail block, or both master and detail?  Stacked canvasses?  Can the number of canvasses in the form be dynamic, or do all of them have to be predefined?

I'd really like to use a stacked-canvas type solution, where the master information resides on it's own canvas that's always visible and the detail info is displayed in a canvas stack, one record per canvas.  It would also be necessary to attach a Forms 5.0-type tab to the canvasses, which would allow the user to directly select the detail of interest (rather than nextrec/prevrec buttons, which force the user to 'scroll' through the detail records).  In fact, the tabbed canvasses are in some sense essential; without that feature, this problem reduces to a simple form, where the detail block is a single-record block.

I guess I should mention that there may be no solution to my question.  If there isn't any way to do what I'm asking, I'll withdraw the question rather than attempt to grade a non-solution.  That's no reflection on any proposed answers or comments offered.  Thanks.

 

by: yesnaudPosted on 1998-04-01 at 00:55:51ID: 1082892

Frank,

I think a better solution would be to cheat the user of the form by pretending that each record are displayed on a different canvas.
Instead what you could do is displaying only one record on one canvas. Then at the bottom of it you can have different buttons, tab look alike items whatever you like, to navigate to a different record. In the background at the base table block level, you could have a when-new-record-instance trigger to redisplay the objects related the that record screen with the new values.

Hope this help...

yoann.

 

by: frankrPosted on 1998-04-01 at 08:08:13ID: 1082893

I guess the critical element is the mechanism for navigating between the detail records.  Does it have to be a tabbed canvas?  No.  However, the tabbed canvas provides the behavior I'm looking for:

 - The concept of a stacked canvas (only one detail visible at a time) is the desired display
    behavior
 - The tabs more-or-less automatically arrange themselves so all are visible
    simultaneously
 - The tabs display the key value for the detail record (allowing one-click navigation directly
    to any record - rather than next/previous navigation, or requiring the user to enter the
    key value for direct navigation)

If a more traditional master/detail implementation is going to work, it would have to involve displaying all the key values for the detail records at once.  Then navigational logic can be attached to each key value to cause the display of the appropriate detail record.

 

by: yesnaudPosted on 1998-04-01 at 08:38:54ID: 1082894


Ok tab is great, it will apparently save you time for navigation
control and behavior...

"The concept of a stacked canvas (only one detail visible at a time) is the desired display  behavior"

Surely you can do something which is looks like a tab control using different canvases.

"The tabs display the key value for the detail record (allowing one-click navigation directly to any record - rather than next/previous navigation, or requiring the user to enter the     key value for direct navigation)"

Here again you can programmatically display all the key-values allowing the user to click on that value which will have for effect to navigate to that record, re-fresh the screen display...

Another good point is that I don't think you can dynamically create 10 tabs at runtime each one displaying a different records, but with my solution you can have as many records display one at a time....

If you want to do it the hard way, is to create a tab for each record you want to display, which means a base table block for each tab, which means a check on what record need to be selected on each block.... etc...

up to you.


 

by: frankrPosted on 1998-04-01 at 14:08:17ID: 1082895

"...you can programmatically display all the key-values allowing the user to click on that value..."

"...but with my solution you can have as many records display one at a time.... "

I guess this is the part I'm a little fuzzy on.  Assume a master/detail form with a single-record detail, and some method for selecting the detail that's displayed.  Ignore the canvas approach (which is the substance of your suggestion).  Am I correctly restating what you've said?  Please expand on your suggested solution.    

 

by: yesnaudPosted on 1998-04-02 at 07:06:30ID: 1082896

Ok,
let's assume you have a master/detail relation ship with a single record detail.

I think (using forms 5.0) I would use eiter an ocx or an activex tree view control, which would be populate with all the parent records you have (these controls can contains up to 32000 lines).

So on the left you would have a tree view with all the key the user can select by a mouse click. When a mouse click occurrs display the child record on a canvas displayed on the right.

I think that would look good. There is activex available for tree view control on the web. www.activex.com is a site where you can search one.

I can't really give you more detail without starting to do the form... :)

Yoann.

 

by: frankrPosted on 1998-04-02 at 09:42:39ID: 1082897

If anyone has been following this discussion, I thought I'd close it out by describing my solution.  (I've spent about a half day experimenting.)  It's not what I'd call 'elegant', but it's very functional and fairly intuitive.  This works for Forms 4.5 or 5.0.

The form has 3 blocks, a master and 2 details. The first master/detail is kind of standard.  The master was created by selecting all columns (with the Forms 'new block' tool), then the detail block was created the same way (using the PK/FK constraint defined in the database for the join criteria).  Again, all columns were selected, it's a single-record block, and the layout is tabular/vertical. No slide bar or buttons.

Here's where it gets creative.  We want to be able to display key values for the detail block, then allow the operator to use a mouse to pick the detail record displayed (rather than using nextrec/prevrec to scroll through the detail items).

We begin to define the third block (the second detail) in the same way as the first detail (it has the same base table as the first detail block, same relationship to the master record, etc.).  The difference is that we only take one column - the key column - and we display multiple records tabular/horizontal.  We include a slide bar, in case there are more detail key values than we can display at one time.  What you get is a row of key values across the bottom of the form.

We define a WHEN-MOUSE-CLICK trigger for the key field in the 'detail_selector' block (the 3rd block).  It has the following code:

   :master.selected_keyval := :detail_selector.keyval;
   GO_BLOCK ('detail');
   EXECUTE_QUERY;

I added a non-displayed field in the master block to hold the most recently selected detail key (there are a lot of ways this could be implemented; the idea is to store the key value selected by the user somewhere).

We also need a PRE-QUERY trigger on the detail block that does the following:

IF :master.selected_keyval IS NOT NULL   /* needed when master is initially selected */
THEN
   :detail.keyval := :master.selected_keyval;
END IF;

The only feature I'd still like to add would be to change the color of the selected value in the 3rd block.  Not possible in Forms 4.5 (can only change visual attribs of an item, not a record).  Not sure if it's possible in Forms 5.0 because I have yet to see any docs for Forms 5.0, even though I've got the software.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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