Search Results per_org_structure_elements

Overview

The PER_ORG_STRUCTURE_ELEMENTS table is a core data object within the Oracle E-Business Suite Human Resources (PER) module. It serves as the foundational repository for defining and storing hierarchical reporting relationships between organizations. This table is essential for modeling an enterprise's organizational chart, where each record explicitly defines a parent-child link. These hierarchical structures are critical for enabling features such as security profiles, approval hierarchies, reporting, and organizational analysis across the E-Business Suite. The table's integrity is maintained through its primary and unique keys, ensuring that each relationship within a specific hierarchy version is uniquely identified and consistent.

Key Information Stored

The table stores the fundamental components of an organization hierarchy. Its key columns include ORG_STRUCTURE_ELEMENT_ID, which is the system-generated primary key for each relationship record. The ORG_STRUCTURE_VERSION_ID is a foreign key linking the element to a specific version of an organizational hierarchy defined in the PER_ORG_STRUCTURE_VERSIONS table, allowing hierarchies to evolve over time. The core relationship is defined by ORGANIZATION_ID_CHILD and ORGANIZATION_ID_PARENT, which are foreign keys to the HR_ALL_ORGANIZATION_UNITS table, identifying the specific organizations in the parent-child link. Additionally, the BUSINESS_GROUP_ID column, also a foreign key to HR_ALL_ORGANIZATION_UNITS, provides the mandatory security and data partitioning context for the record, aligning it with a specific business group.

Common Use Cases and Queries

This table is central to any process requiring traversal or analysis of the organizational hierarchy. Common use cases include generating organizational charts, determining reporting lines for security authorization (e.g., using Security Profiles), and defining approval hierarchies for workflows. A fundamental query pattern involves using hierarchical SQL (CONNECT BY or recursive CTEs) starting from this table to list all descendants or ancestors of a given organization. For example, to find all child organizations under a specific parent within a given hierarchy version, one would query PER_ORG_STRUCTURE_ELEMENTS, joining with HR_ALL_ORGANIZATION_UNITS to get organization names, filtered by the desired ORG_STRUCTURE_VERSION_ID and ORGANIZATION_ID_PARENT. Reporting often involves analyzing span of control or the depth of the organizational structure by counting child organizations per parent or calculating hierarchy levels.

Related Objects

PER_ORG_STRUCTURE_ELEMENTS has integral relationships with several other key HR objects. Its primary foreign key dependency is on PER_ORG_STRUCTURE_VERSIONS (via ORG_STRUCTURE_VERSION_ID), which defines the active dates and status of the hierarchy version to which the elements belong. Crucially, it references the HR_ALL_ORGANIZATION_UNITS table three times: for the BUSINESS_GROUP_ID, ORGANIZATION_ID_PARENT, and ORGANIZATION_ID_CHILD, making it the central link for organizational relationships. The table is also referenced by various APIs and public views that manage hierarchy data. While not listed in the provided metadata, it is logically connected to PER_ORG_STRUCTURE_DEFINITIONS, as versions belong to a definition, and is the primary source for the PER_ORG_STRUCTURE_ELEMENTS_VL (Value Lookup) view, which provides translated organization names for reporting.