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Segment Prompts and Display Lengths

The lengths you choose for your segments and prompts affect how the flexfield displays.

You should ensure that the total of the value set maximum sizes (not the display sizes) for all of the segments in a given structure, plus the number of segment separators you need (number of segments in your structure minus one), does not add up to more than 240. If your structure's concatenated length exceeds 240, you may experience truncation of your flexfield data in some forms.

The display size of the segment must be less than or equal to the maximum size that you chose in the Value Sets window. If you enter a display size that is shorter than the maximum size, you can still enter a segment value of the maximum size since the segment field in the window can scroll.

The default for the display size of a segment when you first enable the segment is the maximum size of the segment based on the size of the underlying column, or 50, whichever is less. Once you choose a value set for your segment, the default for Display Size is the maximum size of the value set. See: Value Set Windows.

Description Sizes for Segment Value Descriptions

Your application uses Description Size when displaying the segment value description in the flexfield window. Concatenated Description Size specifies the number of characters long a segment value description should be when a window displays it as part of a concatenated description for the concatenated flexfield values. Your flexfield may show fewer characters of your description than you specify if there is not enough room for it in your flexfield window. However, your flexfield does not display more characters of the description than you specify.

The value you specify for Description Size also affects the length of a value description that appears in a list of segment values for the segment (if the segment uses a validated value set). However, the width of the description column in a list will not be less than 11 for English-language versions of the Oracle Applications (the length of the word Description in English). This width may vary for other-language versions of the Oracle Applications.

Some flexfields, particularly the Accounting Flexfield, display a special multicolumn format in some forms (for example, the Define MassBudgets window in the Oracle General Ledger products). In these forms, your flexfield window may scroll horizontally if the longest description size (plus the longest prompt and display sizes) is large.

Suggestion: For ease of use, we recommend that you set the Description Size for each of your Accounting Flexfield segments to 30 or less so that your flexfield window does not scroll horizontally.

Segment Prompts and List of Values

Enter prompts for the segment (as it should appear in the flexfield window) and its list of values (if this segment uses a validated value set) and in reports your application generates. Do not use special characters such as +, -, ., !, @, ', or # in your prompts.

If your List of Values prompt is longer than the segment length, you see a warning displayed after you leave this field. This warning is for cosmetic considerations only; your flexfield will still compile normally.

Suggestion: Keep your segments' prompts short and fairly uniform in length wherever possible.

See Also

Key Flexfield Segments Window

Defining Segments

Choosing Your Value Set

Defaulting Segment Values

Flexfield Qualifiers

Descriptive Flexfield Segments Window

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