Multiple Organization Architecture

Introduction

The Oracle E-Business Suite Multiple Organizations Architecture (hereafter referred to as Multiple Organizations), provides support for multiple organizations in a single installation of Oracle E-Business Suite, with relationships you define. Multiple Organizations specifies how the different organizations interact, and how transactions flow between them. These organizations can be ledgers, business groups, legal entities, operating units, or inventory organizations.

Overview

When you run any Oracle E-Business Suite product in a Multiple Organizations environment, you first choose an organization, either implicitly (by choosing a responsibility), or explicitly (by selecting an operating unit when entering data in transaction entry pages, or by running reports). Inventory organizations can be selected in the Choose Organization window; each subsequent window and report displays information for the chosen organization only.

The following terms are fundamental to the Multiple Organizations architecture:

Table 14-1 Multiple Organizations Terminology

Ledger (Set of Books in previous releases)

A financial reporting entity that uses a particular chart of accounts, ledger currency, accounting calendar, and subledger accounting method. Oracle General Ledger secures transaction information (such as journal entries and balances) by ledger. A single Oracle General Ledger responsibility can access, process, and report on data for one or more ledgers that is assigned to its Data Access Set.

Operating Unit

An organization used by Oracle subledgers, such as Oracle Cash Management, Oracle Order Management and Shipping Execution, Oracle Payables, Oracle Purchasing, or Oracle Receivables. In this context, the organization may be a sales office, a division, a business unit, or a department. An operating unit is associated with a legal entity and primary ledger. Information is secured by operating unit. A single application responsibility can access, process, and report on data for one or more operating units that is assigned to its security profile.

Note: For further details, see: Oracle E-Business Suite Multiple Organizations Implementation Guide, Oracle General Ledger Implementation Guide, and Oracle Financials Implementation Guide.

Multiple Organizations Partitioned Objects

Tables that contain Multiple Organizations data can be identified by the suffix "_ALL" in the table name. These tables include a column called ORG_ID, which partitions Multiple Organizations data by organization..

Every Multiple Organizations table has a corresponding view that partitions the table's data by operating unit. Multiple Organizations views partition data by including a DECODE on the internal variable CLIENT_INFO. This variable is set by the security system to the operating unit designated for the responsibility. It operates is a similar way to the LANGUAGE variable, which returns the language of the current session.

Note: If accessing data from a Multiple Organizations partitioned object when CLIENT.INFO has not been set (for example, from SQL*Plus), you must use the _ALL table, not the view.

SO_HEADERS_ALL, with its corresponding view SO_HEADERS, is an example of a Multiple Organizations partitioned object.

Converting to Multiple Organizations

When you install a production Oracle E-Business Suite system, the data model is identical whether you implement Multiple Organizations or not. The Multiple Organizations views used to partition data are incorporated into the normal install, and use predefined text. When you convert to Multiple Organizations, tables are renamed to use the "_ALL" suffix to denote that they now contain Multiple Organizations partitioned data.

In Release 12, the AD Administration utility is used for the initial conversion of seed data and transaction data to Multiple Organizations format. Note that the underlying data model is not changed. When you create a new operating unit, a concurrent program adds the appropriate seed data.

Note: For further details, see AD Administration, Oracle E-Business Suite Maintenance Utilities.