Search Results fa_tl

Overview

APPS.BIS_FUNCTIONAL_AREAS_VL is a bilingual (MLS) validation view defined in the Oracle E-Business Suite BIS (Business Intelligence System / Discoverer) product schema. It presents functional area definitions — the named groupings used to categorize Oracle EBS application content, such as "Order Management" or "General Ledger" — in the language of the current session. The "_VL" suffix denotes a translation view, a standard EBS convention for views that join a base table to its corresponding "_TL" translation table and filter the translation rows by the session language.

Because the view exposes both the untranslated short name and the language-specific name and description, it is the appropriate source for any report, LOV, concurrent program, or custom integration that must display functional area information to an end user in their own language. It shields consumers from having to perform the language join and the USERENV('LANG') filter themselves.

Underlying Base Objects

The view is defined over exactly two documented base objects:

• BIS_FUNCTIONAL_AREAS FA — the base table holding the language-independent attributes of each functional area, including FUNCTIONAL_AREA_ID, SHORT_NAME, and the standard WHO audit columns.
• BIS_FUNCTIONAL_AREAS_TL FA_TL — the translation table holding the language-dependent NAME and DESCRIPTION for each functional area, keyed by FUNCTIONAL_AREA_ID and LANGUAGE.

The two tables are joined on the shared FUNCTIONAL_AREA_ID, and the translation side is restricted by the predicate FA_TL.LANGUAGE = USERENV('LANG'). The view exposes no columns of its own beyond those of the two base tables. The user's search term, "fa_tl," corresponds to the alias FA_TL assigned to BIS_FUNCTIONAL_AREAS_TL within the view definition, which is the principal reason this object surfaces in a search for that token.

Key Columns

• FUNCTIONAL_AREA_ID — Surrogate primary key of the functional area. This is the join key to both base tables and the value normally stored as the foreign key by dependent objects.
• SHORT_NAME — Language-independent short identifier for the functional area, sourced from BIS_FUNCTIONAL_AREAS. Suitable for keys, filters, and programmatic comparisons.
• NAME — Language-specific display name of the functional area, sourced from BIS_FUNCTIONAL_AREAS_TL. This is the value normally presented to end users.
• DESCRIPTION — Language-specific descriptive text for the functional area, also sourced from BIS_FUNCTIONAL_AREAS_TL.
• CREATED_BY, CREATION_DATE, LAST_UPDATED_BY, LAST_UPDATE_DATE, LAST_UPDATE_LOGIN — The standard EBS WHO audit columns, taken from the base table BIS_FUNCTIONAL_AREAS (not the translation table), reflecting when the functional area record itself was created and last modified.

Common Use Cases and Queries

The view is typically used to populate value lists, drive report parameter selection, and resolve a stored FUNCTIONAL_AREA_ID into a user-readable label. Because the data is limited to a single language row per functional area, a query against the view returns one row per functional area with no language-key duplication.

Listing all functional areas in the session language:

SELECT functional_area_id,
       short_name,
       name,
       description
FROM   apps.bis_functional_areas_vl
ORDER BY name;

Resolving a single functional area to its display name:

SELECT v.name, v.description
FROM   apps.bis_functional_areas_vl v
WHERE  v.functional_area_id = :p_functional_area_id;

Filtering by the language-independent short name, which is the safer predicate for programmatic lookups:

SELECT v.functional_area_id, v.name
FROM   apps.bis_functional_areas_vl v
WHERE  v.short_name = 'ORDER_MANAGEMENT';

Note that because the language filter uses USERENV('LANG'), results depend on the value set in the calling session; an initialization or NLS adjustment may be required when the view is queried from outside a standard EBS session context.