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Value set basics in Oracle Apps | Print |

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Written by Anil Passi
Thursday, 26 October 2006
An article on Value Sets, for beginners that follow http://getappstraining.blogspot.com
Question: What is value set?
Answer: It is a set of values

Question: Why do we need value sets?

Answer: You do not always want a user to enter junk free text into all the fields. Hence, Oracle Apps
uses value set to validate that correct data is being entered in the fields in screen.

Question: Is value set attached to all the fields that require validations?
Answer : A big NO

Question: Then where lies the usage of value sets?

Answer: Broadly speaking, value sets are attached to segments in Flexfields. You can argue that value
sets are also attached to parameters of concurrent program(but in reality oracle treats parameters as
Descriptive Flexfields)

Question: This is insane, flexfields haven’t been covered in http://getappstraining.blogspot.com as

yet?
Answer: Agreed, hence let’s restrict value set explanation to their usage in concurrent program
parameters.

Question: Any examples?

Answer: For the namesake, lets add a Parameter to the concurrent program that we defined in
“Concurrent Program Training Lesson link”. Lets add a parameter named “cost centre”, the values to
this parameter must be restricted to one of the three values, i.e. HR, SEC, IT.

At the time of submission of the concurrent program the user should be able to pick a cost centre from
a list. This is where value set gets used.

Lets now define a simple value set as described above.

Step 1. Go to Application Developer, and select menu /Validation/Set

Step 2. Now define a value set of type Independent. We will cover the other most widely used Type
“Table” latter.
Step 3. Now, lets add three independent values to the value set for this Cost Centre list. Hence click on
menu Values within Validation

Step 4. Here we add the values for IT, HR, SEC to this independent value set.

“CONTROL-S” to save the data

Step 5. Now let us go back to Concurrent Program that we created in earlier training lesson and Click
on Parameters
Step 6. Now lets create a parameter, and attach the value set that we created to this parameter.

Step 7.
Now to test this, lets go to receivables manager and click on Requests.

Click on Request,

Step 8.
Submit New Request, and then click on OK.
Step 9
Now, we can see the values defined in the value set here.