HOW CAN I USE MULTIPLE VIEWS IN ONE BLOCK

Question

What I need to do is based on a selection, I have a detail block that shows the results. My selection would determine which view to display in the detail block.
So for example, my selection is:
Source: A
Year 2005
I would then display the details by querying A_2005_VIEW
I can query a view dynamically using the QUERY_DATA_SOURCE_NAME however, my problem is, each view has different column names. How do I show different columns based on specific views?

Answer 1

You could use a "From Clause Query" as the block data source. You can change that dynamically.
Create generically named database items on the block COL1, COL2, ... COLn
Then depending on the users choice in the selection criteria, use the WHEN-NEW-BLOCK-INSTANCE trigger on the query block to
set_block_property(..., query_data_source_name,
'(SELECT viewcol1 COL1, viewcol2 COL2, .... , viewcoln COLN
FROM <whichever view>)');
This will work because Forms constructs the block query thus:
SELECT COL1, COL2, ..., COLN
FROM <blocks query_data_source_name>
so you are using the aliases in your query to match the forms database items names.