Overview of Flexfield Deployment
Deployment generates or refreshes the Application Development Framework (ADF) business component objects that render flexfields on the UI. Deployment adds user-defined attributes to the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) schemas exposed by Oracle Fusion Cloud ADF services and used by SOA composites.
Flexfields are deployed for the first time when the application is provisioned. After you configure a flexfield, you must deploy it to make the changes available to users.
If a descriptive flexfield is enabled for business intelligence, the deployment process redeploys the flexfield's business intelligence artifacts.
You can deploy a flexfield to a sandbox for testing or to the mainline metadata for use in a test or production environment. You can deploy extensible flexfields as a background process.
After deployment, the user-defined attributes are available for incorporating into the SOA infrastructure, such as business process and business rule integration. For example, you can now write business rules that depend on the user-defined attributes. You must sign out and sign back in to Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications to see the changes you deployed in the production environment.
The following aspects are important in understanding flexfield deployment:
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Deployment Status
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Initial Deployment Status
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Metadata Validations
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Metadata Synchronization
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Deployment as a Background Process
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Export of Artifacts from Flexfield MDS
Deployment Status
Every flexfield has a deployment status. Check the deployment status of your flexfield after patching. The following table lists the different deployment statuses a flexfield can have.
|
Deployment Status |
Meaning |
|---|---|
|
Edited |
The flexfield metadata definition hasn't been deployed yet. Updates of the metadata definition aren't applied in the production environment yet. |
|
Patched |
The flexfield metadata definition has been modified through a patch or a data migration action, but the flexfield hasn't yet been deployed. So, the updated definition isn't reflected in the production environment. |
|
Deployed to Sandbox |
The current metadata for the flexfield is deployed in ADF artifacts and available as a flexfield-enabled sandbox. |
|
Deployed |
The current metadata for the flexfield is deployed in ADF artifacts and available to users. No changes have been made to the flexfield after being deployed to the mainline metadata. |
|
Error |
The deployment attempt in the mainline metadata failed. |
Initial Deployment Status of Flexfields
The Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications implementation loads flexfield metadata into the database. This initial load sets the flexfield status to Edited. During installation, the application provisioning process deploys the flexfields of the provisioned applications, setting their status to Deployed if no errors occur.
In a provisioned application, deployed flexfields are ready to use. In some cases, flexfield availability at production environment requires setup, such as defining key flexfields.
Metadata Validation
Use the Validate Metadata command to view possible metadata errors before attempting to deploy the flexfield. Metadata validation is the initial phase of all flexfield deployment commands. By successfully validating metadata before running the deployment commands, you can avoid failures in the metadata validation phase of a deployment attempt. The deployment process ends if an error occurs during the metadata validation phase. Metadata validation results don't affect the deployment status of a flexfield.
Metadata Synchronization
When an extensible or descriptive flexfield is deployed, the deployment process regenerates the XML schema definition (XSD). As a result, the user-defined attributes are available to web services and the SOA infrastructure.
After deploying a flexfield configuration, you must synchronize the updated XML schema definition (XSD) files in the MDS repositories for each SOA application.
Deployment as a Background Process
You can deploy extensible flexfields offline as a background process and continue working in the session without having to wait for the deployment to complete. You can queue up several extensible flexfields and deploy as a background process. The flexfields are deployed, one at a time, in the order that you deploy them to the queue. You must deploy extensible flexfields with more than 30 categories as a background process.
You can remove an extensible flexfield from the deployment queue with the Cancel Background Deployment command. When an extensible flexfield is deployed in a background process, its offline status indicates that the flexfield is in a background deployment process. A flexfield's offline status is cleared and its deployment status updated when the background deployment process has completed.
Export of Artifacts from Flexfield MDS
You can export business components from MDS for descriptive, extensible, or key flexfields, mainly for use in troubleshooting issues with flexfields. Use Download Flexfield Archive on the Manage Flexfields page to export MDS artifacts of the selected flexfield, and import them to an archive on your local computer. You can use these archived business components of flexfields for troubleshooting purposes.
Alternatively, export the deployed artifacts using exportMetadata WLST.