Re: forms 50

Lars Mennen wrote in message <01be037b$39139d00$24e9f1c3_at_lars>...
>In my office, a colleague of mine asked me to convert some forms 4.5
>applications to forms 5.0. However i considered just making them again, he
>thought conversion was a better alternative. I have been looking at
>technet.oracle.com, but couldn't find anything about this upgrade.
>
>Has anybody had any experience with this? What are the problems to expect.
>

I am in the process of converting a Forms 4.5 16-bit application to Forms 5.0 32-bit application. The hardest part is determining registry entries! Seriously --- Developer 2000 v. 2.1 comes with a tool called project builder; I added all my forms, reports and graphics to the "project" I created, and let it do the converting and compiling of the forms. It took me longer to boot my pc on the server I'm on than it did to convert my 20+ forms...

>As far as i know know, the char datatype isn't supported anymore, and a new
>version of PL/SQL seems to be used.
>

You are correct. But, since I knew that the varchar2 was replacing char, that was not an issue for my piece of code. However, the other conversion issues between the PL/SQL versions were, and were handled very nicely by Project Builder. The one I remember:

  Length(variable) now is essentially nvl(length(variable),0). *I* certainly like this one!

I also seem to recall something happening with any number field that did not have a precision specified. That, too, is not a bad idea!

>Another question i would like to ask: what's the most interesting job: DBA
>or developer. I'm still a bit wondering, thinking that a dba is just
>someone who keeps the database running and is less involved with people
>compared to developers. Is this so?
>

My personal opinion (having done BOTH)...I would NEVER be a full-time DBA again. Ever. Too many long nights, non-existent weekends and solitary work. ('Cept for the people on the other end of the telephone at Oracle..) I was DBA in a 24x7 shop, and there were a couple of very long nights that I hope I never see again. By the same token, designing a database and tweaking it for performance, to me, are a challenge. My current job, however, is as a developer, and I'm enjoying every minute of it. (It's also new development, not maintenance, which helps, too...).

Hope this helps...
Louise Received on Fri Oct 30 1998 - 21:18:08 CST