Custom Domains

Domains are similar to list of values and lookups commonly found in transactional systems. These often have language independent code, and one or more language dependent values associated with them. In Oracle BI Applications, you can use domains to support multiple languages and aggregations.

For example, you might have the domain GENDER with the domain members M and F. To support multiple languages, you might have corresponding English values of Man and Woman, and French values of Homme and Femme – the appropriate value returned based on the user’s preferred language.

Domains are often used as criteria in analyses. For example, a report such as Total # of Employees by Gender issues a SQL statement similar to SELECT GENDER, COUNT(*) FROM Table GROUP BY GENDER.

Oracle BI Applications ships a number of domains out-of-the-box to support multiple languages and analyses. You might need to extend Oracle BI Applications with additional domains to support your users’ multi-language and analytical needs.

The two different types of domains are source-based and conformed.
  • Source-based domains are values that are extracted directly from the source system and loaded into the data warehouse with minimal changes (other than to default for NULL values).

  • Conformed domains are meant to provide a consistent set of analyses across multiple heterogeneous source systems that might use different codes to represent the same thing – the ETL process takes the source-based code and matches or conforms it to a Oracle BI Applications-specific code.

Oracle BI Applications supports only custom source domains in the data warehouse. Mapping a new custom source domain to an existing conformed domain is not supported.

See About Multi-Language Support in Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Administrator's Guide.