What Is Extensible Attribute Architecture?

Posted on June 13th, 2011 by Sanjit Anand | Print This Post | Email This Post

Extensibility framework and features basically comes from Oracle Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).

Extensible Attributes are similar to DFF's in the sense that Extensible Attributes feature provides out-of-the box capability to store additional information associated with certain EBS modules entities.In the past, Oracle Descriptive FlexFields (DFF) had a limitation of 15 or 22 data fields per record. There is no limit for Extensible attributes.

The functionality allows you to view and maintain these additional attributes without having to create custom screens. It also allow you to group related attributes and display attributes on specific UI pages.

R12 Extensible Attributes –What are they?

• Extensible attributes add additional rows or records into the database structure and therefore are limitless.
• Extensible attributes can contain one single record (of numerous extended. data fields) or multiple record
• The extended database fields have four data types to choose from and can contain list of value (LOV) definitions for data consistency (entry and reporting) and can control record inserts to be based upon uniqueness (no duplicates)

In Comparison to Descriptive FlexFields (DFF)

Here are the quick comparision with DFF.

Some of the features are

• Limited to certain EBS modules entities.
• Attributes can be displayed as text, check box or radio group.
• Database view is created for each attribute group.
• Uses Value Set for attribute validation.
• Extensible Attributes store unlimited number of repeating attributes (multiple rows of similar data), unlike Descriptive Flexfields.

Components of an extension:

• Attribute Group
• Attributes
• Associations
• Pages
• Functions
• Actions
• Value Sets (Recommend creating before attribute groups)

Extensible entities have corresponding tables to store additional attributes.

For example, in the case of Teleservice some of the tables are CS_INCIDENTS_EXT_B, CS_INCIDENTS_EXT_AUDIT, etc.
For TCA you have HZ_PARTY_SITES_EXT_B, HZ_LOCATIONS_EXT_B, etc.

If customer wants to use Extensible Attributes in Oracle Loans then you need to check with Loans Development to see if they implemented or not Extensibility framework.

Will see more details for TCA Extensible Attributes, in next post.

1. AOL – Descriptive Flex Field ( Deep Drive)
2. ..Bit on DFF Context Synchronization
3. Trading Community Architecture (TCA) 101
4. R12 : Bank & Trading Community Architecture(TCA)
5. How to use Descriptive Flex Fields (DFF) in forms