Using HRMS APIs in Forms 6i

Question

I am trying to build a custom Form that modifies inserts or modifies data in the Oracle HRMS system. To do this I thought the APIs would be the best tool because they would preserve the integrity of the system as a last guard if all of my checks on the data failed to catch something.
I am having problems implementing this idea. I have what essentially amount to wrapper functions that take the dataset I am dealing with and send it off through the various APIs needed to place it in the propper location. Insertion of new data is compiling ok, but when I try to compile a package with a procedure in it that utalizes and update (HR_PERSON_API.UPDATE_US_PERSON) I get the following error:
Implementation Restriction: 'HR_API.G_NUMBER':
Cannot directly access remote package variable or cursor
To simplify the problem I took the procedure out of the program unit in the form and made it a stand alone and also stripped it down to just the bare minimum passing in dummy data most of the time and only using local variables rather than objects. I end up with the following code:
procedure update_person is
start_date date;
end_date date;
full_name varchar2(300);
comment_id number;
comb_warning boolean;
ass_warning boolean;
pay_warning boolean;
emp_number varchar2(200);
object_version number;
begin
object_version := 10;
emp_number := 1210;
hr_person_api.update_us_person(
p_effective_date => to_date('02-apr-2006', 'dd-mon-yyy'),
     p_datetrack_update_mode => 'UPDATE',
     p_person_id => 2852,
     p_object_version_number => object_version,
     p_employee_number => emp_number,
     p_effective_start_date => start_date,
     p_effective_end_date => end_date,
     p_full_name => full_name,
     p_comment_id => comment_id,
     p_name_combination_warning => comb_warning,
     p_assign_payroll_warning => ass_warning,
     p_orig_hire_warning => pay_warning
end;
This gives me the error from above. If I try to create the same procedure in the database itself using a utility like TOAD and the same information to log in to the database I get no such compile error and only get errors when I run the procedure as all the values are dummy and don't actually map to anything.
Information on my version of forms builder, the db, and the application:
Forms [32 Bit] Version 6.0.8.27.0
RDBMS : 9.2.0.6.0
Oracle Applications : 11.5.8
Forms Server
Oracle Forms Version : 6.0.8.25.2
Application Object Library : 11.5.0
I have literaly been on this same problem the entire day and anyone that can help me I would reall apreciate it. At this point I am at a loss. I suspect either I am making the call to the API incorrectly, or it is simply not possible to do what I am trying to do. I hope I am just doing something wrong because as I understood it, one of the points of the API was to allow custom forms to do validated insertion of data.
thanks for any help
Andrew

Answer 1

Your approach of using published APIs is absolutely the best / supported mechanism to propgramatically enter data into HRMS.
This is a long-known issue when calling APIs from Forms - you are not supplying values for all of the parameters that this API exposes, thus the package defaults will be evaluated but these fail over a RPC call.
To work around simply supply all the API parameters with a value to avoid defaulting. So, for those that you do not actually wish to set you can set up a local constant(s) within the form, defined with the same definition as hr_api.g_number, g_varchar2 etc (check the db package specification for these), and pass them explicitly in your call together with those that you are setting currently.