V Oracle flex fields are one of the most important

parts of Oracle Applications. It is because of the

flexfields that the Oracle Applications is so generic
in nature and can be used to suit any industry or
organization. A flexfield, as the name suggests, is a
flexible data field that your organization can
customize to your business needs without
programming. A flexfield is a field made up of
sub²fields, or segments. While flexfields do not
require programming, they do allow you to
perform significant customizations to the Oracle
Applications, so they do require enough
explanation for you to get the most out of the
features they provide.
V ORACLE Application uses flexfield to capture
information about your organization.
V In an Oracle environment, a flexfield is a
database field that has flexibility built into it so
that users can define reporting structures that
are relevant to their specific organizations.
 


   

  



V ×ave ´intelligent fieldsµ³fields comprised of one or
more segments, where each segment has both a value
and a meaning.
V Rely upon your application to validate the values or
the combination of values that you enter in intelligent
fields.
V ×ave the structure of an intelligent field change
depending on data in your application.
V Capture additional information if you so choose.
V Customize data fields to your meet your business
needs without programming.
V Query intelligent fields for very specific information.
j





 



V Configuration of applications to support your
accounting, product, and other codes
V Construction of intelligent keys

V Configuration of applications to capture

additional data
V Use of the application to validate values and
value combinations entered by the user
V Support for multiple field structures
depending on data context
Oracle Applications uses two types of flexfields,
key flexfields and descriptive flexfields.

V 1> ½


O A field you can customize to

enter multi²segment values such as part
numbers, account numbers, and so on.
V Ô> ë



 A field you customize
to enter additional information for which your
Oracle Applications product has not already
provided a field.
V ½ey flexfield is a field made up of segments, where
each segment has both a value and a meaning. You can
think of a key flexfield as an ´intelligentµ field that
your business can use to store information represented
as ´codes.µ
 0ost organizations use µcodesµ made up of
meaningful segments to identify general ledger
accounts, part numbers, and other business entities.
Each segment of the code can represent a characteristic
of the entity.
 For example, consider an account number for a bank. A
complete bank number may consists of various
segments like the country code, area code, city code,
branch code, account type, account number etc.
V ank Number O [01].[00Ô].[08].[S].[1Ô
]
V Country Code .City Code .ranch Code.
Account Type(Savings/Current) .Account #
V The number of segments a bank requires to
identify an account number uniquely is a
requirement specific to the bank. Another bank
might not require a country code if its presence
is there only in one country. ½ey flexfields are
used to identify such information uniquely.
V The p j

in your Oracle
Purchasing application is an example of a key
flexfield that identifies a unique chart of
accounts. One organization may choose to
customize the Accounting Flexfield to have
three segments called Company, Department,
and Account, while another organization may
choose to customize the flexfield to have five
segments called Company, Cost Center,
Account, Sub²Account, and Product.
VA key flexfield appears on
your form as a normal text
field with an appropriate
prompt. In figure 1 below,
the Account field is
actually the Accounting
½ey Flexfield.
 
V Asset ½ey Flex field

V Location Flex field

V Category Flex field

x


V Service Item Flex field

× 
 


V People Group Flex field

V Job Code Flex field






V Territory Flex field

V Sales Tax Location Flex field

÷
 
V Item Categories

V System Items

V Sales Orders

V Item Catalogs
V Descriptive flexfields like the key flexfields
provides further scope of customization in Oracle
Applications.
V Descriptive flexfields provide customizable
µexpansion spaceµ on your forms. Though the
fields on an Oracle Applications form are more
than enough to capture all the possible information
from the user perspective, but still the users can
feel the need of capturing additional information.
V A descriptive flexfield gives you room to expand
your forms for capturing such additional
information.
V Oracle Applications has provided space for
descriptive flexfields on almost all the forms.
Just like in a key flexfield, a pop²up window
appears when you move your cursor into a
customized descriptive flexfield. And like a key
flexfield, the pop²up window has as many
fields as your organization needs. Each field or
segment in a descriptive flexfield has a prompt
(figure ), just like ordinary fields, and can
have a set of valid values. The pop-up as
shown in the figure comes up when you click
on the [ ] icon on the form in the figure3 above.
½
    

  
V Owned by one
application; used by
many
V Ő Required to set up, not
always required to use
V Ő Supports intelligent
keys
V Ő Identifies entities
V Ő Drives reporting
V Associated with tables
in a specific application
V Setup is optional
V No intelligence, stores
additional information
V Captures additional
information only
V Plan flexfield segments, structures, value sets,
and values
V Ő Define value sets
V Ő Define flexfield structure
V Ő Define values
V Ő Define security and cross-validation rules, if
necessary
V Identify the target flex field, the information
required by Oracle Applications, and any
qualifiers.
V Plan the flex field structure, behavior, and
appearance.
V Define the key flex field structures.
V Define any value sets required and their values.
V Define security rules when appropriate.
V Define cross-validation rules when appropriate.
V Define shorthand aliases as needed.
V Procedure to determine the name of the
descriptive flexfieldO
V Click on a field in the same block in which the
descriptive flexfield appears.

V Select ×elp > Diagnostics > Examine.