Trigger changes are not committing to the database

Question

I have 9iAS and 9i DB both on my laptop.
I am having a problem in which a trigger run off a WHEN_BUTTON_PRESSED function is not committing the changes to the database. In the trigger I have:
1 record insert into table A.
1 record update to table B.
1 record insert into table C.
1 delete from table D.
None of the data is related.
I have tried various combinations of the below to get the changes to commit:
POST;
COMMIT_FORM;
Exit_Form(NO_COMMIT, NO_ROLLBACK);
MESSAGE('Got past COMMIT');
COMMIT;
CLEAR_FORM(NO_COMMIT);
ENTER_QUERY;     
I am getting varying amounts of "FRM: 40508 Oracle Error: Unable to INSERT record" statements. Even so, many times the form would act as if the changes had been properly applied. But when I did a separate DB verification, I would see that the changes are not being committed. Also, most of the time the changes would also be reflected in the calling form queries, but when I exit, all changes are rolled back no matter how many commit stmts are in the trigger.
I have finally gotten the form to do what I want to do (the 4 steps noted above), but I had to add a FORMS_DDL('COMMIT'); stmt and I am still getting a FRM 40508, but at least the changes are appearing in the db.
Any ideas on why so many troubles in getting the changes to commit??? I have spent a ton of hours trying "what ifs" to see what might work. Also, this trigger is the only real "code" in the forms.
Kim

Answer 1

Brett -
You're probably right about the intention, but this is a place where people can come and share styles, ideas, and coding tricks, I don't understand why someone would say that. Additionally, I had a professor who was a complete momo that said that all the time (consequently, his lax attitude towards teaching crippled the IS program where I graduated and most likely will cause it to no longer be available). It's a personal peeve of mine, just to let you know where I was coming from.
Secondly, the problem I'm having may have to do with what you said, however I can't be sure. To give a better description of my scenerio, I created a form that allows the user to load information about an employee by querying a SSN. Most of this information is for display only. Six fields are available to be updated and I wrote a DML UPDATE statement that I placed inside a WHEN-BUTTON-PRESSED trigger. However, these changes won't be written to the DB because Forms is attempting to write my entire datablock, instead of just following the specified DML statements. I'm at a loss as to why this would happen, but for simplicity's sake, I would listen to ideas of how to suppress this from happening so only my statements are used when updating the DB. If you can help, thank you, if not, then thank you for your time.
Steve