Flex fields Concepts- Theory

Flexfields

Flexfield is made up of various segments. Each segment can have many values as defined in the values set.

Flexfields helps us to confirm to business needs and standards by defining account codes, product categories in a particular fashion. Fields can have various segments which both have value and some intended meaning. Also, with help of flexfields, we can validate the combination of values that can be entered in fields.

There are 2 types of FF (Flexfields):

1.    Key FF

They are defined only once for the instance and are not editable under normal circumstances. They are meaningful codes specific to your organization. For example, “System-i5-lap-win7” and “System-Lap-win7-i5” are the two codes represent the same information i.e.  laptop system with i5processor, window7 operating system. Now, different organization can choose to define their codes in any manner that suit them by just changing the order of the segments. They are required parameters for an oracle application and are must.

2.    Descriptive FF

They are used to capture unique business information which cannot be captured using predefined attributes in the various forms. They are like defining additional space in form to capture other information. Example, suppose we want to define some information about the item but there is no attribute defined by the application to capture that information, so in that case we can define a descriptive ff. They appear on the forms like [ ]. They are optional.

Various associated Terminologies:

Consider the same code: System-i5-lap-win7

1.     Segment: Now, System, i5, lap, win7 are the segments(segment1, segment2, segment3, segment4 respectively)

Segment 1	Segment2	Segment3	Segment4S
System	I5	Lap	Win7

2.     Segment separator: ‘-‘is the segment separator.

3.     Value Set: Defines all the values that can be taken by the various segments. For example, if company uses only 2 processors i5 and i4, the value set for segment 2 consists of only i5 and i4.Value sets are defined corresponding to every segment. Also, value sets can be assigned to more than 1 segment.

	Value set
Segment 2	i5,i4

4.     Value: i5, i4 are the values. Any single entity in the value set is the value.

Key FFs owned by Inventory Application

There are many Key ffs in oracle and each is owned by some application. Let us look at the 6 Key ffs owned by the Inventory application.

1.     Account Aliases

2.     Item Catalogs

3.     Item Categories

4.     Sales orders

5.     Stock Locators

6.     System Items

In the next article, we will look at the practical part of FFs like how to define value sets, segments, how to compile flex structure for the flexfield Item category.