Flexfield Qualifier
A flexfield qualifier identifies a segment your end user should define when customizing your key flexfield. By specifying flexfield qualifiers when you build your application, you ensure your end user customizes your flexfield to include key segments that your application needs. For example, suppose you build a general ledger accounting application that uses a key flexfield to uniquely identify accounts. Your application requires that one key segment be an account segment, and one be a balancing segment. You ensure your end user defines these key segments by defining two flexfield qualifiers, account and balancing. When customizing your accounting flexfield, your end user ties the account and balancing flexfield qualifiers to particular key segments. You, as the developer, need not know which key segment becomes the account or balancing segment, because the key flexfield takes care of returning account and balancing information to your application at run– time.
Segment Qualifier
A segment qualifier describes characteristics of key segment values. You use segment qualifiers to obtain information about segment values your end user enters while using your application. For example, suppose your end user enters a value in the account segment of a flexfield that uniquely identifies general ledger accounts. Since you, as the developer, do not know which segment represents account, your application cannot reference the account value directly. However, you can construct your application so that each account value has an associated segment qualifier called ”Account type” that your application can easily reference. Assume that account value 1000 (which means ”Cash”) has an account type of ”Asset”. Your application can reference this account type because your key flexfield returns it to a column you designate in your generic combinations table. Your application can contain logic that is conditional on account type. You can define segment qualifiers when you define flexfield qualifiers. You can assign one or more segment qualifiers to each flexfield qualifier.
Structure Defining Column
A column you include in a combinations table or entity table so the flexfield can support multiple segment structures. You can construct your application so that it places a value in a structure defining column to determine the flexfield segment structure your end user sees. For example, Oracle General Ledger places a ”Chart of Accounts” identifier in the structure defining column of the combinations table for the Accounting Flexfield. As a result, Oracle General Ledger can provide different Accounting Flexfield structures (different charts of accounts) for different users.
Building a Flexfield:
Decide which application entities require key or descriptive flexfields. Use KFF to uniquely identify a entity an entity that needs an intelligent key. Use DFF to privide context-sensitive expansion space for carrying additional information about an entity.
Design the flexfield into your applications database.
Register the flexfield with Oracle AOL, if necessary, assign flexfield and segment qualifiers for your key flexfields.
Develop application forms that include your flexfield and call Oracle AOL routines to activate it.
Customize it to include a specific set of segments.
Designing Flexfields into Your Application Database
You include flexfield columns in the database table that represents the application entity for which you are defining a flexfield. You include one column for each flexfield segment you or your end user might wish to customize. You need at least as many columns as the maximum number of segments a user would ever want in a single flexfield structure. If you have more segments than can fit on your screen when the flexfield window is open, you can scroll through them vertically. For a key flexfield, a combinations table represents the application entity. A combinations table includes flexfield segment columns as well as other columns a key flexfield requires. Key flexfields provided by Oracle Applications already have combinations tables defined. To permit the use of flexfield combinations from different application forms, you must include foreign key references to your combination table’s unique ID column in other application tables. That way, you can display or enter valid combinations using forms not based on your combinations table. When you build a custom application that uses Oracle Applications key flexfields, you would include foreign key references in your custom application tables wherever you reference the flexfield. To define a descriptive flexfield, you include descriptive segment columns in the application table you choose. You also include a structure defining column (sometimes called a context column), in case your end user wants to define multiple segment structures.
Registering a Flexfield
You register a flexfield with Oracle Application Object Library after you design it into your database. By registering a flexfield, you notify Object Library that your flexfield exists in the database, and providesome basic information about it..When you register a flexfield, you give it a name that end users seewhen they open your flexfield pop– up window (for example, ”Accounting Flexfield” or ”Vendor flexfield”). End users can change the flexfield name you provide when they customize your flexfield.
Key Flexfields Window Descriptive Flexfields Window
Building a Flexfield into a Form
To add a flexfield to a form, you define hidden form fields to represent the flexfield columns you defined in your application table (that is, unique ID, structure defining, segment, and other columns). You also define a visible form field to hold the concatenated segment value string that appears on your form after your end user enters segment values. You can optionally include a visible form field to hold a concatenated string of the meanings of each segment. To activate your flexfield, you call Oracle Application Object Library routines from your form’s triggers. Implementing Key Flexfields Implementing Descriptive Flexfields 
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