Results for “as_ref_contacts”

AI-generated from documented ETRM metadata — verify critical details on the linked pages.

Overview

AS_REF_CONTACTS is a legacy table belonging to the Oracle E-Business Suite Sales Foundation (AS) module. According to Oracle's own ETRM documentation, the object carries the description "No Longer Used," and the Implementation/DBA Data section explicitly records that it is "Not implemented in this database." This is a critical fact for any consultant or developer researching the table: in supported releases such as EBS 12.1.1 and 12.2.2, AS_REF_CONTACTS is a dormant, obsolete artifact. It survives in the data dictionary as part of the application's historical schema lineage but does not participate in live transactional or reference processing within the Sales Foundation application.

The table was originally designed to associate contact records with reference entities, functioning as a bridge between a contact identity and the reference object it was linked to. In EBS, contact and reference data were eventually consolidated into the Trading Community Architecture (TCA) model, embodied by the HZ_REFERENCES and related HZ_% tables. AS_REF_CONTACTS predates or overlaps that consolidation, and its retirement reflects the migration of contact-reference relationships into the TCA registry.

From a heuristic Data Vault modeling perspective, the mined foreign-key structure suggests a satellite-leaning classification. Its single documented foreign key, AS_REF_CONTACTS.REFERENCE_ID pointing to HZ_REFERENCES, implies that the table held descriptive or associative attributes that qualify a parent reference entity rather than establishing an independent business hub. In Data Vault terms, it would be modeled as a satellite hanging off the HZ_REFERENCES hub (or a link-satellite combination if contact identity is treated as a separate hub), capturing the assignment of contacts to references. This classification is a suggestion derived from the FK topology, not a documented Oracle position.

Key Information Stored

The documented metadata for AS_REF_CONTACTS is deliberately sparse, consistent with an object marked "No Longer Used." Only two columns are explicitly identified in the ETRM record:

• CONTACT_ID — documented as the primary key column, enforced through the AS_REF_CONTACTS_PK constraint. This is a surrogate key identifying each contact-reference association row; it carries no intrinsic business meaning and exists solely to provide row uniqueness.
• REFERENCE_ID — documented as the foreign key column referencing HZ_REFERENCES. This is a business-key candidate in the sense that it ties each row to a specific reference entity in the TCA model, but it is not unique within this table on its own (a single reference could historically be associated with multiple contacts).

No other columns are enumerated in the provided documentation, and because the table is not implemented in the database, no additional column inventory can be validated against a live data dictionary. Consultants should treat CONTACT_ID as the surrogate primary key and REFERENCE_ID as the principal foreign-key attribute; any further columns reported by third-party tools or legacy extraction scripts should be treated as unverified.

Common Use Cases and Queries

In current EBS environments there is no operational use case for AS_REF_CONTACTS, because the object is not implemented. It should not appear in production queries, concurrent programs, or custom reports on 12.1.1 or 12.2.2. Practical engagement with this table therefore centers on remediation and discovery rather than reporting.

Typical scenarios include:

• Legacy migration review. Teams upgrading from much older releases may encounter references to AS_REF_CONTACTS in historical DDL scripts or custom code and must confirm whether the table exists. A simple existence check is the appropriate first step: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dba_tables WHERE table_name = 'AS_REF_CONTACTS';
• Dependency cleanup. Custom forms, reports, or interfaces that still name the table in their SQL should be refactored to use TCA views such as HZ_REFERENCES and HZ_RELATIONSHIPS, which provide the supported contact-reference modeling.
• Metadata reconciliation. During ETRM or data-lineage audits, documenting that AS_REF_CONTACTS is retired prevents false dependencies from being carried into new integration designs.

When a similar association is required today, queries should be written against TCA tables, for example joining HZ_REFERENCES to contact-holding HZ tables through their supported relationships, rather than attempting to resurrect the obsolete structure.

Related Objects

The related-object footprint of AS_REF_CONTACTS is minimal because of its retirement status. The documented relationships are:

• HZ_REFERENCES — the referenced parent via the foreign key AS_REF_CONTACTS.REFERENCE_ID → HZ_REFERENCES. This is the sole documented FK and the most significant related object.
• AS_REF_CONTACTS_PK — the primary key constraint on CONTACT_ID, defining the table's uniqueness contract.

Beyond these, dependencies are inferred rather than documented. Because the AS module feeds Sales Foundation processing shared with Oracle Order Management and Oracle Advanced Pricing, contact and reference data formerly held here are now sourced from the TCA layer, principally HZ_REFERENCES, HZ_RELATIONSHIPS, and the HZ_CONTACT_POINTS family. Custom code that once referenced AS_REF_CONTACTS typically migrates to those supported TCA objects. No other FK relationships, views, or public APIs are recorded for this table in the ETRM metadata, reinforcing the conclusion that AS_REF_CONTACTS is a historical, non-operative schema artifact.