Glossary

A

account: The business relationship that a party can enter in to with another party. The account has information about the terms and conditions of doing business with the party.

account relationship: A relationship that implies financial responsibility between the owners of the accounts. For example, a customer account relationship lets you apply payments to and create invoices for related customers, as well as apply invoices to related customers' commitments.

account role: The role that a party has in regard to controlling or using an account, for example, owner, authorized user, or contact.

account site: A party site that is used within the context of an account, for example, for billing or shipping purposes.

acquisition: The part of the DQM matching process that matches input record attributes against the attributes in the staged schema to get a smaller group of records that form the work unit. This process narrows down the records that can be scored in the scoring part of the matching process.

acquisition attribute: Attributes used for selecting the most relevant subset of records for matching, or the work unit. For example, to get records based on D-U-N-S Number, you include the D-U-N-S Number attribute for acquisition.

adapter: A device that enables different pieces of software to be compatible. In the context of address validation, adapters facilitate integration between the TCA Registry and a third party or a deploying company data source.

area code time zone: A time zone that corresponds to a specific area code, used for countries that have multiple time zones.

attribute: Corresponds to a column in a TCA Registry table, and the attribute value is the value that is stored in the column. For example, Name is an attribute and the actual values of party names are stored in a column in the HZ_PARTIES table.

attribute group: A group of closely related attributes within the same entity. Each group has a primary attribute. The values for each attribute in a group must come from the same data source.

automatic merge threshold: Value used in DQM matching to evaluate match scores. A record with a score that exceeds the automatic merge threshold is by default selected for party merge.

B

batch de-duplication: The process within TCA Bulk Import of identifying and resolving duplicates within an import batch. The duplicates are resolved in the interface tables, before actual import into the TCA Registry.

black box: An abstraction of a device or system in which only its externally visible behavior is considered and not its implementation or inner workings. In the context of TCA adapters for address validation, a black box is a central XML open-standards based functionality that allows integration between the TCA Registry and third party or other data sources, through adapters. The black box accepts requests from callers, sends requests to adapters, and receives the adapters' responses.

bulk duplicate identification: The Data Quality Management process of identifying duplicates for a large number of records within the TCA Registry. The process involves only match rules with the Bulk Duplicate Identification type.

Business Information Report (BIR): A report that provides many of the data elements from the D&B database in a standard report format.

business object

An abstract grouping of Oracle Trading Community Architecture entities to form an operable, logical business unit. Business objects contain attributes specific to that object, as well as embedded business objects, business structures, and granular entities.

See also: business structure and entity

business purpose: Also known as site use, a business purpose describes which functions are performed at a particular customer account site. For example, the address where you ship your goods has a ship-to business purpose, and the address where you will send dunning letters has a dunning business purpose.

business structure

The same as a business object, except that you cannot perform operations and services on them individually, for example with APIs. Business structures can contain embedded business structures and granular entities, but not embedded business objects.

See also: business object and entity

C

caller: A source that sends requests to black boxes for data services through integration with adapters. Examples of callers are concurrent programs and APIs.

candidate record: See: duplicate

category use: Controls which object can use a given class category. For example, the SIC code 1977 can be used only by parties of type Organization.

certification level: A level that identifies the extent to which a record is certified, according to quality standards that your organization sets. The record is manually evaluated and assigned the certification level.

circular relationship: Circular relationships participate in a circle of relationships between entities. For example, Party A is related to Party B, who is related to Party C, who is related to Party A.

class category: Consists of multiple classification codes that allow for broad grouping of entities. Categories can have rules pertaining to a set of class codes, for example, Multiple Parent, Multiple Assignment, and Leaf Node Assignment rules.

class code: Provides a specific value for a class category.

classification: A means of categorizing different objects in Oracle Applications. Classifications are not limited to parties but can include projects, tasks, orders, and so on. Classifications can be user defined or based on external standards, such as the NAICS (North American Industrial Classification System), NACE (European Union's Statistical Classification of Economic Activity), or SIC (Standard Industrial Classification).

code relationship: Relates various class codes within a category in a hierarchy. For example, IT is a parent of Software.

contact point: A means of contacting a party other than postal mail, for example, phone number, e-mail address, fax number, and so on.

contact preference: Provides information about when and how parties prefer to be contacted. You can specify the subjects on which to contact a party, the number of times to contact a party, and the reason for specifying a contact preference. You can also set preferences for a party's e-mail address or phone number.

country structure

A hierarchical definition of geography types for a country. For example, the structure for United States is: State, County, City, then Postal Code.

See also: geography type

country time zone: A time zone that applies to an entire country.

customer: A person or organization that the deploying company has a selling relationship with, regardless of whether anything has been purchased or serviced. A selling relationship can be established simply by negotiation terms that will be used if you later sell products.

customer profile class: Specific credit limits, payment terms, statement cycles, invoicing, and discount information that you use to categorize customer accounts. For each profile class, you can also define amount limits for your finance charges, dunning, and statements for each currency in which you do business.

D

D&B hierarchy: Contains hierarchical corporate relationships that D&B provides through batch load and the online Enterprise Management Global Data Product (GDP). You can view this corporate structure in a relationship hierarchy.

data element: A piece of information in a data product that you can use to identify, contact, and evaluate the credit risk of parties. The complete D&B database includes over 150 key business data elements. Examples of data elements include the D-U-N-S Number, local business ID, and D&B rating.

data product: A fixed set of data elements from D&B containing country-specific information to meet your business decision-making criteria.

Data Quality Management (DQM): A set of tools to keep the TCA Registry clean and accurate, with powerful searching, matching, duplicate identification, and merging functionality.

data sharing group: Identifies a subset of party-related data that can be secured. The data sharing group identifies both the types of entities to be protected (such as parties, their addresses, contact points, relationships, and the like) as well as specific criteria to identify which party related data to protect, which can be based on classifications, relationship types, or "created by" modules. For example, one data sharing group might be created for patients, another for employees, and another for parties classified as both patients and employees. A security administrator may then assign privileged access to create, update, or delete information secured by this data sharing group based on the applicable business policy.

data source: The source of the records in the TCA Registry, for example user entered, third party, or other source system.

deploying company: The Oracle customer that has or will install, implement, and run all or part of the Oracle E-Business Suite.

D-U-N-S (Data Universal Numbering System) Number: The nine-digit identification number assigned by D&B to each commercial entity in its database. For businesses with multiple locations, each location is assigned a unique D-U-N-S Number.

duplicate: A record that has been identified as a duplicate of at least one other record.

duplicate set: A group of records (such as parties, addresses or relationships) that has been identified as potential duplicates of one another in appearance and/or function.

E

entity: A group of related attributes in the TCA Registry, for example Organization Profile, Person Profile, Address, and Contact Point.

exact match: Matching method that requires an exact character match, as compared to a search that uses the similarity algorithm.

extensions: Extended attributes and their attribute values. These custom attributes extend the TCA Registry. TCA extensions use the extensibility framework and features from Oracle Product Hub.

F

file load: Contains information about loading data from one comma-separated value (CSV) file, or file delimited by another allowed character, into the import interface tables. A file load identifies the source file to load, as well as the location, format, and content of the file, and defines how attributes from the file map to the interface table columns.

fuzzy match: Matching method that finds data with only some similarity to the search criteria and compensates for errors in data entry and phonetics.

G

geography

A defined instance of a geography type. For example, San Jose is a geography of the City geography type.

See also: geography type

geography type

A divisional grouping of geographies, either geopolitical, for example City, Province, and District, or physical, for example Island, Mountain, and Continent.

See also: geography

geography usage

A classification of a set of geography types to indicate the purpose and use of that data, for example for taxation. For example, the State, County, and City geography types can be used for US sales tax calculation.

See also: geography type

geography validation: A process to ensure that addresses have valid geographic information, for example, the correct combination of city, state, and postal code. Because street level data is not included, however, this validation does not ensure that addresses pass postal validation and can have postal deliveries to those locations.

Global Data Product (GDP): A fixed set of data elements from D&B containing information to meet your business decision-making criteria. The GDP is not country specific and can be purchased globally.

granular entity: See: entity

group ID: Identifies records acquired from D&B in the HZ_PARTY_INTERFACE table. For a batch of records with the same ID, you can specify that ID to transfer those records from the interface table into the TCA tables.

H

hierarchical relationship: A relationship in which a party is ranked above the other. The rank is determined by the role that they are taking in a relationship

hierarchical relationship type: A relationship type that allows hierarchical relationships. A hierarchy can be defined by creating multiple hierarchical relationship type records.

hierarchy: A collection of entities associated with a particular hierarchical relationship type at a given point in time. The hierarchy is a tree structure that shows relationships by organizing entities in hierarchical levels. For a given entity, all entities displayed the level below in the hierarchy are its children, and the entity displayed a level above is its parent.

hierarchy node: An entity in a relationship hierarchy. The node at the top of the hierarchy is the top parent, or root node. Any node without children is a leaf node.

I

identifying address: The main address for a party, regardless of business purpose. Each party has only one identifying address.

import batch: A set of data to be imported at one time, with one batch per data source. Batches are loaded into the import interface tables and then transferred to the TCA Registry.

input record: The basis for comparison or matching. Input records can be compared to other records in the staged schema to find existing duplicates in the TCA Registry. An input record can also be search criteria or entered party information that is compared to the staged schema to find matches or potential duplicates in the registry.

interface search tables: A set of temporary staged tables with B-Tree indexes, used in Data Quality Management, to store transformed data from TCA Bulk Import interface tables. The interface search tables can be joined with themselves to find duplicates within an import batch, or joined with the staged schema to find duplicates between the interface tables and the TCA Registry.

internal indicator: An attribute that indicates if a party is internal to your organization or not.

L

leaf child: A record in a hierarchy that does not have any children.

location: A point in geographical space described by an address.

logical entity: See: entity

M

mapped D-U-N-S Number: The D-U-N-S Number associated with the party record that is actively mapped to the D&B data source, through Source System Management. When multiple parties have the same D-U-N-S Number, the party that is actively mapped has the mapped D-U-N-S Number.

master record: The record that remains after other duplicates in a duplicate set merge or transfer into it.

Master Reference Geography Hierarchy

The geographical data considered as the single source of truth. The geography usage for the entire hierarchy is Master Reference, and defined geography types and geographies are considered master reference geography types and geographies. For example, Country is a universally recognized geography type, and United States is considered a master geography.

See also: geography, geography type, and geography usage

match percentage: A percentage that indicates how closely a search result matches the search criteria. The percentage is the record score divided by the highest possible score.

match rule: A rule that determines which records are matches for an input record. A match rule consists of acquisition attributes that are used for matching and can also include scoring attributes to score the matched records.

match rule set: A match rule of type Set that contains multiple match rules and conditions to determine which rule in the set to use. All rules in a set have the same purpose, either Search or Expanded Duplicate Identification.

match score: The score of an attribute after the original score has been multiplied by the weight percentage. The total score of a record consists of the sum of all match scores from its attributes.

match threshold: Value used in DQM matching to evaluate match scores. A record with a score that exceeds the match threshold is selected as a match for the input record.

merge: The operation that maps one detail entity to another detail entity of the same type, to resolve duplicates.

merge batch: Contains information about the duplicate parties or party sites to merge.

Merge Dictionary: A dictionary that stores the entities and procedures that must be processed to merge party entities for any Oracle application.

merge mapping: The process of evaluating the records in a duplicate set for the purposes of: a) identifying a single record which will survive as the merge master, and b) defining which specific addresses and relationships from each of the remaining duplicates will be brought forward into the merge master.

merge master: See: master record

merge request: A request is that is created when a Data Librarian, a system process, or an end user identifies a set of records as duplicates that need to be merged. The Data Librarian has a choice to accept or reject the request. After a merge request is created, accepted, merged, and submitted, the Party Merge process merges the duplicate parties or information.

Multiple merge request: A merge request that contains two or more party records to be merged. In contrast, a single merge request contains only one party record, which means that only the subordinate entities already related to that specific party, such as addresses or contacts, are to be merged.

O

object: The entity that the subject is related to in either direction of a relationship. For example, if Oracle is the employer of Joe, then Joe is the object. With the other direction stating that Joe is the employee of Oracle, Oracle is the object.

organization person: A person who acts on behalf of or in the context of an organization.

Organization Profile entity: An entity with attributes that describe parties of type Organization.

Other entity: An entity that is not a party profile entity. Other entities include: Address, Contact Point, Credit Rating, Financial Report, and Relationship entities.

override threshold: Value used in matching to evaluate match scores. The input record can be prevented from entering the TCA Registry if a duplicate is found that exceeds the override threshold.

P

party: A person, organization, relationship, or collection of parties that can enter into business relationships with other parties.

party preference: Enables you to store a persistent state for a party that is a user of Oracle Applications. For example, in a mobile customer application, you can create and maintain the My Customers list, which is a subset of customers in the TCA Registry. Each user can create a personal list of customers by adding customers from the public database to a personalized customer list. The iReceivables application can also use the party preference feature to store a list of customer accounts frequently accessed by a user.

party profile attributes

Party profile attributes describe basic details of a party, for example name and address. Attribute values are the values that a party has for the attributes. For example, Oracle is the attribute value for the Organization Name attribute. Attribute values can be purchased, entered, or imported into the TCA Registry.The profile attributes are categorized for parties of type Person and Organization:

Person: Person Profile, Financial Details, Demographics, and Tax Details
Organization: Business Profile, Business Details, Socioeconomic Details, Tax Details, and Special Events

party profile entity: Either the Person Profile or Organization Profile entity. These entities include attributes that describe parties of type Person or Organization.

party site: The association between a party and one or more locations. For example, the headquarters of a company is a party site.

party type: The type of party: Person, Organization, Group, or Relationship.

Person Profile entity: An entity with attributes that describe parties of type Person.

phone format: The format of phone numbers within a country. For example, for the US phone format, you define the phone country code as 01, the fixed area code as three numbers in length, the subscriber number as seven digits in length, and the format style as 999-999-9999.

preprocessing: A process that runs after submitting a new or changing the master of an existing merge request. Preprocessing creates or regenerates the merge request and all suggested mapping defaults.

primary: The primary address, phone, e-mail, or URL for a business purpose. For example, an organization has many addresses for the bill-to purpose. The primary bill-to address is the main one among all of the organizations's bill-to addresses.

primary attribute: The primary attribute of an attribute group.

primary business purpose: The primary business purpose for a specific address, or customer account site.

prospect: A person or organization that a party has a potential selling relationship with. A prospect might or might not become a customer.

purge request: A purge request contains one or more parties to purge from the TCA Registry. Only parties that are marked for purge in the request are actually purged.

Q

quality adjusted match percentage: A match percentage that takes into account the custom-defined quality of the records. The quality adjusted match percentage is calculated by adding the weighted match percentage and the weighted quality percentage.

quality score: A number that represents the quality of the record, with 100 as the highest. The get_quality_score procedure, with custom-defined logic, determines the quality score.

quality weighting: The portion of the final quality adjusted match percentage that should be based on quality. The get_quality_weighting procedure, with custom-defined logic, determines the quality weighting.

R

Registry De-Duplication: The process within TCA Bulk Import of identifying and resolving duplicates between an import batch and the TCA Registry. The duplicates are resolved after the actual import into the TCA Registry.

Registry ID: The unique number given to each entity in the TCA Registry.

relationship: A state of connectedness between two entities, consisting of two entities and a relationship phrase pair that belongs to a relationship type. Each relationship has two directions, as determined by the phrase pair.For example, a relationship states that Oracle is the employer of Joe, as well as that Joe is the employee of Oracle, in the other direction.

relationship group: A mechanism for grouping similar relationship roles and phrases together. As a general rule, this grouping is used to determine which relationship roles and phrases are displayed in application user interfaces but can also be used to group roles and phrases for other functional uses.

relationship hierarchy: A relationship hierarchy is all the entities associated with a particular hierarchical relationship type at a given point in time under a top node, or root. The hierarchy is a tree structure that shows relationships by organizing entities in hierarchical levels. For a given entity, all entities displayed the level below in the hierarchy are its children, and the entity displayed a level above is its parent.

relationship model: A model that allows you to get visibility into the complex relationships among the members of your trading community and to utilize the information to make better business decisions.

relationship phrase: Defines the role of the subject of a relationship. For example, if an organization is an employer of a person, the Employer Of role describes the subject.

relationship phrase and role pair: Consists of a subject relationship phrase and role, an object relationship phrase and role, a subject type, and an object type. Each relationship phrase and role pair must belong to a relationship type. Each relationship type can have one or more relationship phrase and role pairs.For example, the pair is defined so that Organization is the subject type, Employer Of is the subject phrase, Employer is the subject role, Person is the object type, Employee Of the object phrase, and Employee the object role. When you create a relationship with this phrase and role pair, the parties that you use must match the subject and object types.

relationship role: A term that describes the role that an entity plays in a relationship. Every relationship has two entities and two relationship roles, or a relationship role pair. One role describes the subject entity of the relationship, and the other the object. For example, if Pat is the employee of Vision, then Pat is the subject party and Vision is the object party. Pat's relationship role is employee, and Vision's role is employer. The role pair is employee/employer.

relationship type: A relationship type is a categorization of relationship phrase pairs and consists of one or more phrase pairs that can be used to create relationships. Hierarchical relationships are created with phrase pairs that belong to a hierarchical relationship type. A relationship type also determines whether circular relationships are allowed when relationships are created with its phrase pairs.

S

score: Assigned in integer form to attributes in the work unit. Scores are not limited to the range of 1 to 100 and are multiplied by the weight percentage to calculate the match score.

scoring: The process of assigning weighing factors to match results, and grouping and ranking the match results.

scoring attribute: Attribute used to calculate a score for each record in the work unit.

similarity algorithm

Computes the edit distance between two strings, or groups of text, and assigns a percentage value to the result.The calculation used to determine the similarity percentage is:

Determine the edit distance, or the number of changes required to make the longer string match the shorter string.

For example, for Smythe and Smith, the edit distance is two.
Subtract the edit distance from the number of characters in the longest string.

Following the example above: 6 - 2 = 4.
Divide the amount calculated in step 2 by the number of characters in the longest string.

Continuing the example: 4/6 = 0.6666
Express the result as an integer.

In this example the result would be a similarity score of 67.

If two strings are identical, then the similarity percentage equals 100. If no characters in the two strings are the same, then the similarity percentage is zero.

Single merge request: A merge request that contains only one party record to be merged. Only the subordinate entities already related to that specific party, such as addresses or relationships, are to be merged. In contrast, a multiple merge request consists of a duplicate set with at least two parties to merge.

Single Source of Truth (SST) record: The record that represents a single view of the most accurate information about a party's profile. The attributes in the SST record can contain information from different data sources, depending on your setup.

site use: See: business purpose

Smart Search: A search engine powered by DQM, with results based on the entered search criteria and the match rule used for Smart Search.

source ID: The ID of the record in the legacy, third party, or other external system.

source system: A legacy, third party, or other external system that provides data for the TCA Registry.

source system overwrite rule: Determines if new source system data can overwrite existing user-entered data in the SST record. This rule applies only to user-entered data that previously overwrote source system data.

staged schema: A mirror of the TCA Registry but contains data that are transformed and standardized based on transformation functions for better matching. Data in the staged schema is extracted into an interMedia index for high performance searching.

standardize: Standardizing is a data manipulation technique that improves the quality of matching. Standardizing in Data Quality Management involves transforming words or phrases into the same format.

subject: The entity that the object relates to in either direction of a relationship. For example, if Oracle is the employer of Joe, then Oracle is the subject. With the other direction stating that Joe is the employee of Oracle, Joe is the subject.

System Duplicate Identification (SDI) batch: The output of the System Duplicate Identification (SDI) process. An SDI batch may contain multiple duplicate sets that can be used to create merge requests by the Data Librarian.

T

TCA Registry: The central repository of party information for all Oracle applications. The party information includes details about organizations and people, the relationships among the parties, and the places where the parties do business.

threshold: A value used to evaluate records, for example to determine if a record is a match or not.

top parent: A record in a hierarchy that does not have any parent. The top parent is a root node.

Trading Community Architecture (TCA): A model that provides a virtual representation of the community that business is conducted in. This model includes parties and related party entities.

transfer: The operation that moves one detail entity from the duplicate candidate record to the master record, to resolve duplicates.

transformation: A seeded or user-defined rule that transforms and standardizes TCA attribute values into representations that can assist in the identification of potential matches.

transformation function: See: transformation

U

user create and update rule: Determines user privileges to create new records for Other entities and to update Other entity data from source systems..

User-Defined Geography Hierarchy

A classification of geographical data, created from master reference data or manually entered, for specific usage such as tax. While the Master Reference Geography Hierarchy is the source of truth for geography data, for example with all the US states defined, user-defined geography hierarchies contain entities with arbitrary boundaries, for example time zones that encompass various US states in each zone.

See also: Master Reference Geography Hierarchy

user overwrite rule: Determines if new user-entered data can overwrite existing source system data in the SST record. Each rule includes all attributes from the party profile entities, and you define the rule for each individual attribute.

V

validation status code: A code that describes an address's level of validation against a known and authorized source. Address validation adapters assign one of these codes to each address record that is validated. A default code must be reached or exceeded for an address to be updated with data from the authority's database.

W

weight: A percentage that is assigned to a transformation function and is used to factor the score of an attribute.

weighted match percentage: The original match percentage that is adjusted for the calculation of the final quality adjusted match percentage. For example, if 70% of the final percentage is from the original percentage, then the original percentage must be adjusted to be out of 70%, not 100%. This adjustment, for the weighted match percentage, is calculated as: Weighted Match Percentage = Match Percentage * (100 - Quality Weighting) / 100

weighted quality percentage: The quality score adjusted based on the quality weighting, for the calculation of the final quality adjusted match percentage. For example, if the quality weighting is 30, meaning 30% of the final percentage is from the quality score, then the quality score of the record must be adjusted to be out of 30%. This weighted quality percentage is calculated as:Weighted Quality Percentage = Quality Score * Quality Weighting / 100

word replacement: A word mapping that is used to create synonyms which are treated as equivalents for searching and matching. Base words in the party, account, address, or organization contact record are replaced with a normalized word during search to provide consistency in search results.

work unit: Consists of all records from the staged schema with attribute values that match the attribute values of the input record.