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LOOKUPS

Lookup Types and Lookup codes in Oracle Apps

Question : What is a lookup in Oracle Apps

Answer: It is a set of codes and their meanings.

Question: Any examples?

Answer:The simplest example is say a lookup type of Gender.

This will have definitions as below

Code Meaning

------ -------------

M MaleF Female

U Unknown

Question: But where is it used, any examples of its usages?

Answer: Let us say that there is a table for employees, and this table named

PER_PEOPLE_F & has following columns

----

FIRST_NAME

LAST_NAME

DATE_OF_BIRTH

GENDER

Question: Will the gender column in above table hold the value of M or F or U?

Answer: Correct, and the screen that displays people details will in reality display

the meaning of those respective codes (i.e. Male, Female, Unknown etc) instead of

displaying the code of M or F or U

Question: hmmm...so are lookups used to save the bytes space on database

machine?

Answer: Noooo. Imagine a situation as below

a. There are 30,000 records in people table of which 2000 records have gendervalue = U. In the screen, their Gender is being displayed as "Unknown". Now lets

say you want this to be changed to "Undisclosed". To implement this change, all

you have to do is to change the meaning of the lookup codes for lookup type

GENDER. Hence it will look like

Code Meaning

------ -------------

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M Male

F Female

U Undisclosed

Here lies the beauty of lookups, you do not need to modify 2000 odd records in this

case.

Question : Any other usage of lookups?

Answer : Sure, lets take another example. In HRMS, there is a field named

Ethnicity. By default Oracle ERO delivers the below values

Lookup code lookup meaning

---------------- ---------------------

AS Asian

EU European

Now, if your client wants to track Ethnicity at a granular level, they can amend the

Oracle delivered lookup definition as below

Lookup code lookup meaning

---------------- ---------------------

ASI Asian-Indian

ASP Asian-Pakistani

EU European

Hence these values will then be available in the list of values for Ethnicity field.

Question: Are we saying that all the lookups delivered by oracle can be modified?Answer: Depends. If oracle has a lookup called termination status, and if based on

the termination status code Oracle has some rules defined within Payroll Engine....!!

Surely Oracle Payroll Engine will not like it if you end date an existing status code

or add a new status code to termination. For this very reason, Oracle flags some

lookups as System lookups, and the lookup entry screen will not let you modify

those lookup codes.

Question: OK, what if I do not wish to modify existing Lookup codes, but only wish

to add new Lookup codes to an existing Oracle delivered Lookup Type?

Answer:You can do so, provided the Oracle delivered Lookup Type is flagged asExtensible. Please see the screenshot

Question: Can we add our own new lookup types?

Answer:Yes you can, for this you will first define a lookup type and will then define

a set of lookup codes against the Lookup Type. In our example above, GENDER is

the LOOKUP_TYPE

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Question: Does a LOOKUP_TYPE get attached to a Descriptive Flexfieldjust like

Value Sets?

Answer: Not really. There is no direct relation between lookup and Descriptive

Flexfield.

Now, the screenshots. Click on the menu as below to invoke Lookup Screen.

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Once in the screen, you can define your lookup type and lookup codes as below.

CREATED LOOKUP GENDER