Unable to update record in web Form

Question

Hi, i am unable to update record in a form. I am building a custom form using forms 6i and putting it on the web in oracle applications 11.5.9
I used template.fmb as a starting point for my form. I have one datablock based on a table. Insert, update and delete properties are set to yes on the property pallete of data block. The table against which i am running the form has a primary key which is a combination of two fields. I am able to update a record with pure SQL running against the table.
My form now brings back a record from the db like it should but whenever I try to update that record either by pressing Action Save or by clicking button that has update statement in it, instead of doing an update, it does an insert and tells me that this record already exists and that i entered value(s) that must be unique for each record. It thinks I want to insert but I want to update. What am i doing wrong???
Update allowed value is set to Yes in all the items in the data block and at the data block level as well. Querly_only is set to no.
What's even more frustratinng is that I've ran the form manually before starting with template.fmb and have been able to update the table but when I put it on the web and used template.fmb it stopped working!
I am very new to forms, can anybody suggest anything? Please help!!!

Answer 1

When you populate the 2nd block with a select into query, it's the same as just typing the data into the block. The record is treated as one needing to be inserted, not as one that is queried.
To populate it using a true query, but with data from the LOV, you can do this:
Programmatically set the default_where clause of the block based on the LOV. For example, if a name is chosen from the LOV in an item called LOV1, you could do:
set_block_property('block2','default_where','name='''||:block1.lov1||'''');
or if the LOV is a number, like a department number:
set_block_property('block2','default_where','deptno='||:block1.lov1);
The tricky part when you build your where clause is that you must surround strings with single quotes, and the way to do this is to use two single quotes to represent an actual single quote in the where clause. Otherwise a single quote is interpreted as part of the PL/SQL syntax.
Then, just navigate to block 2 and execute a query:
go_block('block2');
do_key('execute_query');
I hope this works for you. I didn't have time to test this, so I hope I didn't make any syntax errors when typing.