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About the User Exit Interface

Foreign functions are subprograms written in a 3GL programming language that allow you to customize your Oracle Forms applications to meet the unique requirements of your users. Foreign functions are often used to enhance performance or provide additional functionality to Oracle Forms.

In Oracle Forms, you can call a user exit from within a trigger or user-named subprogram using the USER_EXIT Built-in. The user exit must be written to return an integer value status code from the function. The return value of the user exit indicates success, failure, or fatal error. Following the execution of the USER_EXIT Built-in, the values of the error variables in Oracle Forms—FORM_FAILURE, FORM_FATAL, and FORM_SUCCESS—are set accordingly.

Special handling is required to make a user exit callable from Forms Runtime. When using a user exit on Microsoft Windows, user exit functions must be linked into a dynamic link library, and a special configuration library must be updated with information about each user exit. The configuration file provides information about the user exit interfaces and the entry points that allow Oracle Forms to invoke foreign functions from a user exit interface. When using user exits on other platforms, a configuration file must be updated with information about each user exit, and the compiler version of that file, plus the compiled version of the user exit code, must be linked into the Forms Runtime executable.

Note: An alternative approach for calling a foreign function is from a PL/SQL interface. The ORA_FFI Built-in package provides a PL/SQL interface for invoking foreign functions from Oracle Forms.


About IAPXTB control structures

About the PL/SQL interface

Invoking a foreign function from a user exit

About writing a user exit on Microsoft Windows

Writing a User Exit in UNIX