Friday, February 18, 2005

Notes Developers are you losing your mind?

We ran into an issue that was giving a developer fits. She has been working with formulas in views on a project and believing she might be loosing her mind. After determining what was going on, she came to me and demonstrated the problem. I did a quick search on the forums and knowledgebase and came up with a document describing our issue, but relating to R5. I think she is feeling a bit better about her mental status now, but I wonder how many people it has had banging their head against the wall. I put an ESR in on it this morning. We have not tested all scenarios, but if one is working with formulas in views and happens to be trying different things and making changes to their formulas within PostOpen or QueryOpen and happens to make a syntax error one does not receive any indication that there was a syntax error and upon saving the formula reverts back to the way it was. Of course, if you get the syntax correct, great, it is saved, which makes figuring out what is going on even more of a challenge as it appears to be a random occurrence as you never realized that you had the syntax error. How nasty!

This appears to be documented in TechNote 1095067 (SPR# GFLY57ZRY8 - Status: Open/Reproduced), submitted 3/13/2002 and updated 3/14/2002 (per viewing via Notes it shows an updated date of 9/13/2004), in relation to R5, but we have found that it is in 6.5.2 which we use and tested 6.5.3, to find that it is still there as well. The workaround the developer will probably work with for now is simply to put the formula in an action to test syntax and then copy and paste it into her PostOpen.

So maybe some of you are not going as crazy as you thought you were.

Updated 2/18/2005 @ 2:15pm: Response from Electronic Service Request

I have read both the technote(1095067) and SPR(GFLY57ZRY8) that you mentioned in your ESR regarding incorrect syntax in views being accepted as syntactically correct. The SPR says that this problem has been fixed but since you're having problems, I will try to reproduce your issue here. If I am able to reproduce your issue, I can then submit a new SPR regarding this issue. In the meantime, the only known workaround is included in the SPR. I've pasted the workaround below for your convenience:

Workaround:

Make sure the syntax of your formulas is correct if you don't want to redo changes again and again and...better yet, copy the formula into the clipboard before saving it.

I will follow up with you on Wednesday, 2/23 or sooner with updates. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

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