Tutorial for Oracle10g Forms / Reports

(Version 3.0)

by: David Zhu (IT Analyst)

Reviewed by: Joe Callaghan

School of Business Administration

Oakland University

Rochester, MI 48309-4401

March. 2006

Prerequisite:

You have an Oracle account on Oracle server and you have Oracle10g Developer Suite installed and configured to the Oracle10G Server on your workstation.

**You have created a Student table (FTPT_STATUS, MAJOR, SEX, START_SEM, START_YEAR, STUDNAME) in Oracle database by using Oracle10g Designer or SQL*Plus.**

**You have basic PL*SQL knowledge.**

Lesson 1

In this lesson you will learn:

What is Oracle10g Forms/Reports

Tools provided by Oracle10g Forms/Reports to create Forms and Reports

How to log on to Oracle10g Forms/Reports

Create your first block and form based on your Student table

What Is Oracle10g Forms/Reports?

Oracle10g Forms/Reports is an Oracle tool that helps you to create web-enabled forms and reports based on the tables that you have created using Oracle10g Designer or SQL Plus commands. Starting from Oracle10g, Oracle10g Forms/Reports has become one of Oracle10g Developer Suite components. You can use Oracle10g Forms/Reports to:

Design and customize your forms and reports.

Add various functionality, like radio buttons, combo boxes, and list of values to make your forms and reports more user friendly.

Write triggers on your objects to add functionality to them and capture errors.

Web enable your Forms or Reports on a development server.

Tools Provided By Oracle10g Forms/Reports

Oracle Oracle10g Forms/Reports provides four tools:

Object Navigator: In this tool you can view all your objects, add new objects and name/rename your objects.

Layout Editor: This tool helps you design your forms and reports and add various objects to them like push buttons and list boxes.

PL/SQL Editor: This is the tool that is used to write all the codes for the triggers, procedures or functions.

Menu Editor: This tool will help you create a customized menu that can be attached to your form or report.

Logging On to Oracle10g Forms/Reports

To log on to Oracle10g Forms/Reports, go to Start Programs Oracle10g Developer Suite Forms Developer, click Start OC4J Instance (Very important: You must keep OC4J running while using Oracle10g Forms/Reports !!!), after OC4J initialized, then click Forms Builder.

Immediately, you will see the window for Forms Builder:

Double click Data Blocks, Select 'Use the Datablock Wizard' and click OK--This is the easiest method to design a new form.

You will now see the Welcome to the Datablock Wizard Window. Click Next to proceed.

Figure 8.3

You will now see the window for the Datablock Wizard. Select Table or View as in the figure and click Next.

Figure 8.4

You will now see the window that prompts you to select a table or a view--your form will be created based on this selection. Since no table or view is being shown, click on browse to look at the list of tables and views in your database.

Figure 8.5

Once you click browse, the connect window will appear. Type in your username, password and database to connect to the database.

You will now see the tables window. Select current users and tables and click OK.

Figure 8.7

You will now see the list of tables created in your database. Select Students and click OK.

Figure 8.8

You will now see your selected table and its available columns on your screen. Click on the single right arrow to select the first column to be shown in your form; in this case the STUDID column. You will now see this column under the database items selected sub-window.

Figure 8.9

To move the rest of the columns, simply click on the double right arrow and this will select all your columns in to the database items.

Figure 8.10

You will now see the Congratulations window. Make sure that "Create the data block, then call the Layout Wizard" is selected and click on Finish.

Figure 8.11

You will now see the Layout Wizard Welcome window, click next. You will see the following screen, click next.

select the items that you would like to show in the form. Make sure that the data block selected is Students and then click the double right arrow to move all the columns of the Student block from the available items to the displayed items. Click on Next to continue.

Figure 8.12

The window with the prompt for the height and width of the items will appear. Click Next to accept the default values.

Figure 8.13

The Layout Wizard will now prompt you to select the layout or view style of your block. Select Form and click Next.

Figure 8.14

The Layout Wizard will now prompt you to select a title for the form that you are creating. Type in Student Records. Click Next to continue.

Figure 8.15

Congratulations! You have now successfully created your first form. Click Finish to view your form.

Figure 8.16

You will now see the canvas view of the form that you have created. You can now add various objects like push buttons, combo boxes and radio buttons to your form to make it more graphical and user friendly. We will do this in the next lesson.

Figure 8.17

You can now format the form manually. Click on the frame to select it. Then drag the frame to make it bigger.

Figure 8.18

You can now space out the data fields to make your form more visually appealing. You can do this by simply selecting the data field and dragging it to your desired area.

Figure 8.19

After you have formatted all the data fields, your form should look like the following:

Figure 8.20

Lesson Summary

In this lesson you have learned:

What is Oracle10g Forms/Reports

Tools provided by Oracle10g Forms/Reports to create Forms and Reports

How to log on to Oracle10g Forms/Reports

To create a data block

To create a basic form based on a table that you had created.

How to view your form in the canvas.

Next, you will learn to add more objects and functionality to your basic form. For this, proceed to Lesson 2.