The OpenROAD 4.0 application development environment allows developers to invoke methods and access attributes of an ExternalClass object containing an ActiveX component. In many instances the specification of an ExternalClass method invocation or attribute access does not contain a status indication, in that the operation either fails or succeeds, with the operation target either containing junk or a valid external class component. There was no way to differentiate that an ExternalClass object contained a valid object using OpenROAD 4GL. Subsequent operations on invalid or junk objects led to more problems, such as strange execution patterns, trashed data, application crashes, and lost data.

OpenROAD 4.1 now provides a way to indicate to a 4GL program that the last ExternalClass operation failed and provides detailed information as to why the failure occurred.