How to Declare External Compiled Forms

You can precompile your forms in the Visual Forms Editor (VIFRED). This saves the time that would be otherwise required at runtime to extract the form's definition from the database forms catalogs. When you compile a form in VIFRED, VIFRED creates a file in your directory describing the form in the VAX-11 MACRO language. VIFRED prompts you for the name of the file with the MACRO description. After you have created the file, use the following VMS command to assemble it into a linkable object module:

This command produces an object file containing a global symbol with the same name as your form. Before the Embedded SQL/FORMS statement addform can refer to this global object, the object must be declared in an Embedded SQL declaration section with the following syntax:

• The formname is the actual name of the form. VIFRED gives this name to the address of the global object. The formname is also used as the title of the form in other Embedded SQL/FORMS statements.

The example below shows a typical form declaration and illustrates the difference between using the form's object definition and the form's name.

exec sql begin declare section
    external integer empform
    ...

exec sql end declare section
    ...
exec frs addform :empform    ! The global object
exec frs display empform     ! The name of the form
    ...