Re: Lost .frm files

On Mon, 3 Apr 2000, Nick Lello wrote: >I have several compiled .per form files which were compiled under >Informix 5; now with the jump to Informix 7.30 we need to recompile the >forms but obviously can't... I suspect the problem is that you've got the .frm files but not the .per files (source code). >Does anyone know of a way to decompile forms. Or the whereabouts of >any information on the compiled form structure. Practically no-one has that information - myself included. That's not quite the same as saying it doesn't exist, but it didn't seem to exist when I was looking after the code a few years ago. Some changes were made recently (7.30 and CENTURY fields), so the knowledge probably does now exist, but I don't have it at hand. You've got several options, depending on how complex the forms are, and whether they are ISQL or I4GL forms. ISQL forms would be much harder to deal with than I4GL forms. Basically, you would run the forms or programs with DBSCREENOUT (and/or DBSCREENDUMP) set to some file name. At suitable points, you would use control-P to save the screen images to the file. This would give you the basic layout of the screen sections of the form -- one layout per form for I4GL forms and possibly (probably?) several for ISQL forms. You'd then have to edit in field tags and associate those field tags with the correct bits of the database. The really hard bit is rediscovering the attributes for each field. There is an internal 'form decompiler', but it does not regenerate the source or anything like that -- it is more a form dumper which tells you in the most cryptic possible manner what is stored in the form file. This is never placed on release media. -- Yours, Jonathan Leffler (Jonathan.Leffler@Informix.com) #include <disclaimer.h> Guardian of DBD::Informix v1.00.PC1 -- http://www.perl.com/CPAN "I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it!"