Fields

A Field definition describes the metadata needed by the application to support the capture and display of a piece of information. Fields may correspond to physical columns on database tables or represent any type of element used for calculation or presentation purposes.

The definition includes the following key details:

  • Whether the field refers to a physical column on a database table or used as a work field.

  • The type of data the field holds.

  • The label to use when the field is presented.

  • The help text to display when the user clicks on the help icon seeking additional information about this field.

  • and more

The following sections further discusses concepts and guidelines related to defining fields.

Physical vs. Work Fields

A Field definition record exists for every physical column on a database table that is used by the application. Refer to Understanding Tables for more information.

A Field that does not represent a physical column on a database table is considered as work field and needs to be marked as such. Work fields are typically used as labels as well as describe internal elements used in business rules.

Data Type Information

The type of data captured by a field is defined using the following attributes:

  • Data Type indicates the basic type of value the field holds. Valid values are Character, Character Large Object, Date, DateTime, Number, Time, Varchar2 and XML Type.

  • Extended Data Type is used to further define the type of data for certain data types. Valid values are Currency Source, Day of Month, Duration, Money, Month of Year, Flag, Switch and URI.

  • Precision defines the length of the field. In the case of variable length fields, it is the maximum length possible. For number fields that include decimal values, the precision includes the decimal values.

  • Scale is only applicable for number fields. It indicates the number of decimal places supported by the field.

  • Sign is only applicable for numbers. It indicates if the data may contain positive or negative numbers.

Data Type Inheritance

A Field can be defined to inherit its data type attributes from the definition of another field. The field to inherit the attributes from is referenced as the Base Field. When using a base field reference, the data type attributes are defined once, on the base field, and all the fields inheriting their data type information from it are kept consistent with that definition as it may change over time. Any change of a field’s data type attributes is automatically reflected on all the fields that reference it as their base field.

Data type information may either be specified directly on the field itself or by referencing a base field. The system does not support a way to partially override the base field’s data type information.

It is recommended to leverage data type inheritance whenever possible, especially when the reason for creating a new field is to provide an alternate label for the original field in a certain context. In that situation the new field should reference the original field as its base field and provide the new labels and help text as needed.

Labels and Help Text

For fields that appear on a user interface, the description acts as a label to be used for presentation purposes. As per the product's multi-language support, a field is associated with a label for each of the languages enabled in the system.

A field's help text may be used to provide the user with additional information on how the field is used. When populated for a field that is visible on a user interface that supports display of embedded help, a help icon appears for the field, presenting the help text to the user when clicked.

Overriding Labels and Help Text

The label and help text provided for a product owned field may be overridden by your organization using the corresponding override fields.

The field's label and help text can be overridden for a specific table by populating the corresponding override information as part of the table / field definition. However, this override is not used in portal based user interfaces. It is only applicable if the field is displayed on fixed page user interfaces. For fixed pages, if the override label at the table / field level takes precedence over the override at the field level.

Alternate Labels

There are contexts where a separate label may be needed for the "date" and "time" parts of a date/time field. Such an example is when the field is used by the operational analytics product. For example, for a "Completion Date/Time" field you may provide the context label "Creation Date" for the Date context and "Creation Time" for the Time context. These context labels are optional.

In the same way, date fields, time fields and date/time fields may be associated with a Date and Time Base context label, which is a label without a reference to the word "Date", "Time" or "Date / Time". For example, for a "Completion Date/Time" field, the date and time base label may be "Completion". This label that can be used in combination with date or time attributes such as day, month, year, hours, minutes etc.

Overrides labels are available for these additional context labels.