One of the roundtable questions was
>8.  From: D. I. O'Genes
>
>Text: With a couple of significant omissions the HP3000 is very good at
>providing the ability to retrieve run-time information from the environment.
>This is very important for re-usable routines, where often the only
>available parameter is a handle to a database or a form-file.
>However, given only the ... COMAREA returned by VOPENFORMF, it is not
>possible to determine ... the formfile in use...
 
You can use a command file that dynamically assigns data files to
your application via use of file equations.  These of course, can
be overridden or statuic.
 
  parm run_acct="!hpaccount"
  file mydb=maindb.data.!run_acct        { select db }
  file myvfast=myapp.vfast.!run_acct     { select vfast file }
  file globdata=globdata.data.prod       { some static file }
  run  myapp.pub.!run_acct
 
These file equations are extremely handy for knowing where your db's etc.
are.  My basic question to D.I. O'Genes (Diogenes?  Hahaha :-))
is , "Why do you want to do this?".  Since you have control at the
outset of the application of where to get your data and formsfile name,
I can't see a need to dynamically retrieve the actual name.
 
It's probably a good idea in your applications to not fully qualify the
name of the database, datafiles, etc., as it is _much_ easier to implement
development arenas and test suites.
 
\KenR
Ken Robertson
Manager MIS
Robelle Consulting Ltd.
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Have you ever cut your finger on the lid after opening a can of worms?
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