Integrating mutiple forms into one form using tab canvas

Question

Hi everyone,
I'm relatively new to Forms 6.0 and also to this discussion. Could somebody please explain the pros/cons while integrating 8 maintenance forms into one form(Each page in the tab canvas representing one form)?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Aruna

Answer 1

If the maintenance forms are small, you can integrate them into a single form with a tab canvas, although 8 may prove difficult--try it and see what it looks like to have eight tab pages. Make sure the first block and field in the form navigator is the field you want to show at startup.
You would use multiple forms (1) to modularize largish chunks of complex code that don't interact with each other (2) to decouple logically separate applications (3) to decouple reusable modules that you can then pop into other applications (4) to create shareable components to share through an object library into base forms.
In your case, the main issue is the logical separation with reusability also raising its head. Each form is logically distinct for maintaining a specific set of tables, so putting it in a separate form makes sense. It would also allow you to reuse the maintenance forms in different applications without including everything. This might be a security issue, for example--some apps might need access to only some of the 8 forms.
Tab pages are also not as easily formatted as you might like, so check it out before assuming that tab page interfaces in Forms are your solution.