How You Supply User Keys
User keys are specific to the business object component that you're loading. The Business Object Details page in the View Business Objects task identifies the user-key attributes available for all business-object components and foreign-object references.
The user-key attributes are required when you create a record. They're also required when you update it, unless you supply a different key type to identify the record uniquely. This topic describes how to use user keys to identify local records and refer to foreign objects. It also describes how changes to user-key values affect their usefulness as keys.
Specifying User Keys for Local Records
A user key can be made up of multiple attributes. You must supply them all if you're not using another key type, such as a source key, to identify the record. This example shows how to identify a Job object by its user key, which is made up of the JobCode and SetCode attributes.
METADATA|Job|JobCode|JobName|SetCode|EffectiveStartDate|EffectiveEndDate
MERGE|Job|SE|Software Engineer|COMMON|2010/01/01|4712/12/31Specifying User Keys for Foreign-Object References
In this example, an Assignment object is uniquely identified by its source key. However, a user key is used for the foreign-object reference to the associated Job object.
METADATA|Assignment|SourceSystemId|SourceSystemOwner|JobCode|SetCode|EffectiveStartDate|EffectiveEndDate
MERGE|Assignment|234234|EBS-UK|SE|COMMON|2013/01/01|4712/12/31Managing Changed User-Key Values
The values of some user keys aren't fixed. For example, you can change the name of an organization or location. As user keys can change, using them for historical references is difficult. If you're loading date-effective history for a business-object component where the user key has changed, then you must also supply a source key. This approach enables HCM Data Loader to identify related date-effective records correctly to form the object that you're loading.