Results for “null_allowed_flag”

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

Overview

HR_S_DATABASE_ITEMS is a Human Resources (PER) module table residing in the HR schema, documented in ETRM as VALID with 11 columns in release 12.2.2. The object is annotated as "Retrofitted," indicating it was introduced or reintroduced into the E-Business Suite data model to support the Oracle HRMS Extensible Application Framework (also referred to as the "S" or "Extensible" data dictionary layer), which allows customers and integrators to define custom data structures that behave as native HRMS entities. In practice, the table stores descriptive metadata about the individual data items (attributes) belonging to a user-defined entity registered with the Oracle HRMS framework, so that the framework engine can render, validate, and persist values for user-extension columns without code changes.

Under the heuristic Data Vault classification mined from its foreign key structure, the object resolves as standalone. This is a modeling suggestion only: the table carries a single outbound reference and no dependent children in the mined FK graph, so it behaves less like a classic hub or link and more like a self-contained reference or configuration satellite owned by the framework rather than by a transactional business process.

Key Information Stored

The documented column list is comparatively narrow, and the semantically significant attributes are:

• USER_ENTITY_ID — the foreign key to FF_USER_ENTITIES, identifying the parent user-defined entity to which the item belongs. This is the principal business-key candidate and the primary join path.
• USER_NAME — the developer-facing name of the data item, used as the identifier in the framework's metadata layer and typically exposed in the entity definition DDL.
• DATA_TYPE — the declared datatype of the item (for example character, number, or date), which drives validation and physical storage decisions within the extensibility engine.
• DEFINITION_TEXT — the item's definition or prompt text, surfaced in the generated user interface and in framework diagnostics.
• NULL_ALLOWED_FLAG — a mandatory/optional indicator controlling whether the framework permits null values when the item is saved by an end user.
• DESCRIPTION — free-text documentation of the item's purpose.

The remaining columns are standard Oracle EBS WHO-column audit attributes: LAST_UPDATE_DATE, LAST_UPDATED_BY, LAST_UPDATE_LOGIN, CREATED_BY, and CREATION_DATE. The metadata does not document a named surrogate primary key column, so the reliable lookup key is the combination of USER_ENTITY_ID and USER_NAME as maintained by the framework. The ETRM extract does not list unique indexes explicitly; DBAs should confirm the actual constraint definition in the HR schema before relying on either column alone as unique.

Common Use Cases and Queries

Typical uses are diagnostic and integration-oriented rather than transactional. Common scenarios include auditing which custom attributes exist on a user-defined entity, reconciling a custom entity definition against a data-migration mapping, and troubleshooting why a flexfield-style item is missing, mis-typed, or incorrectly flagged as mandatory.

• Inventory the items belonging to one entity, filtered by entity name, to produce an attribute catalogue for a customer extension.
• Detect items whose DATA_TYPE differs from the value expected by a downstream extract or interface.
• Identify descendants of the parent entity to assess the impact of an entity change or a patch.
• Reconcile NULL_ALLOWED_FLAG against the source system's mandatory-field rules during a conversion.

A representative pattern joins the parent entity table on the documented FK:

SELECT d.user_name, d.data_type, d.null_allowed_flag, d.definition_text
FROM hr.hr_s_database_items d,
ff_user_entities e
WHERE d.user_entity_id = e.user_entity_id;

Separately, metadata-driven reporting can be automated by joining to the corresponding value tables (the "FND"-style value storage and attribute tables) so that entity definitions can be decoded into column headings for end-user extracts.

Related Objects

• FF_USER_ENTITIES — the parent table referenced by HR_S_DATABASE_ITEMS.USER_ENTITY_ID; the primary dependency and the join key for every entity-to-item query.
• FF_USER_ENTITY_USAGES — defines where each user entity is applied within the application, providing the deployment context for the items defined here.
• FF_USER_ENTITY_GROUPS — groups user-defined entities for presentation, and frequently traversed when locating the items belonging to a given functional area.
• FND_FLEX_VALUES and the flexfield value tables — store the accepted values for flexfield-style items and are commonly joined to resolve item values at runtime.
• FND_DESCRIPTIVE_FLEXS — defines the descriptive flexfields underlying many user entities, tying the entity model back to standard Oracle EBS flexfield technology.
• APIs and framework packages — the HRMS Extensible Application Framework PL/SQL routines that read this table's metadata to generate, validate, and persist item values, rather than direct DML against HR_S_DATABASE_ITEMS itself.

Because the object is classified as standalone, it should generally be treated as framework-owned metadata: query it freely for documentation and diagnostics, but avoid direct inserts or updates outside the supported framework APIs.