Search Results populate_element_info

Overview

The APPS.PAY_US_EMPLOYEE_BALANCES package is a United States localization component within the Oracle E-Business Suite payroll schema. Its stated purpose, per the package header, is to fetch earnings and non-tax deduction balances for an employee and populate those values into PL/SQL tables. The package is specifically consumed by the Employee Balances form, which reads balance values associated with different earnings elements and non-tax deduction elements. The fetched balance values are collected into PL/SQL tables that are then returned to the calling form for display.

The package carries an API classification of OTHER, indicating it is not a public, supported business API but rather an internal helper used to support a specific form. The header records the original authoring in December 2003 under bug 3311781, with subsequent revisions in January 2004 and March 2004. The March 2004 revision (version 115.2) added a ROWID column to the earn_rec and dedn_rec record structures, reflecting the need to uniquely identify the underlying rows returned by the balance queries.

Key Procedures and Functions

ETRM documents a single program unit for this package: POPULATE_ELEMENT_INFO. This procedure is the core of the package and is responsible for retrieving balance information for earnings and non-tax deduction elements and loading that data into PL/SQL tables for consumption by the Employee Balances form. The procedure was explicitly modified in version 115.1 (January 2004) under the same bug number that created the package, indicating early refinement of its balance-retrieval logic.

The package header references two PL/SQL table record types, earn_rec and dedn_rec, which hold earnings balances and non-tax deduction balances respectively. As of version 115.2, both record types include a ROWID column in addition to their balance data columns. No other procedures or functions are documented for this package in the ETRM metadata, and no parameter lists are exposed at the specification level in the supplied excerpt.

Tables Accessed

The package operates against a broad set of payroll and HR tables, resolved through APPS synonyms. Balance definition and resolution rely on PAY_BALANCE_TYPES, PAY_BALANCE_ATTRIBUTES, PAY_BAL_ATTRIBUTE_DEFINITIONS, PAY_DEFINED_BALANCES, and PAY_BALANCE_FEEDS_F. Element classification and definition are drawn from PAY_ELEMENT_CLASSIFICATIONS, PAY_ELEMENT_TYPES_F, PAY_ELEMENT_LINKS_F, and PAY_INPUT_VALUES_F. Element entry and entry value details come from PAY_ELEMENT_ENTRIES_F and PAY_ELEMENT_ENTRY_VALUES_F. Run-time balance values, which are the actual figures surfaced to the form, are read from PAY_RUN_BALANCES. Supporting context is provided by PAY_ASSIGNMENT_ACTIONS, PAY_PAYROLL_ACTIONS, and HR_SOFT_CODING_KEYFLEX. The package reads these tables to resolve which balances apply to a given assignment and payroll action and to return their current values.

Usage Notes

PAY_US_EMPLOYEE_BALANCES is invoked from the Employee Balances form rather than by concurrent programs or external APIs. The ETRM metadata records zero referencing packages, confirming that it is a terminal, form-facing component with no downstream programmatic dependents. Custom code should not treat it as a supported public API; any direct invocation risks breakage because the package is internal, U.S.-specific, and its interface is not guaranteed across patches. Developers investigating the "populate_element_info" reference should understand that the procedure exists to populate PL/SQL tables consumed by a single form, and that its behavior is tied to the balance definitions active for the assignment being viewed.