Oracle Apps 4 Beginners: Introduction to Oracle Interfaces - 1

Why do we need interfaces? In many real time business scenarios there is a need to transfer data from one system to another system. In such cases we need to develop program, these program are nothing by interfaces. Interfaces are of two types: 1. Inbound interface 2. Outbound interface As the name suggests, inbound interface gets data from another system and imports them into our system. Similarly, an outbound interface extracts data from our system and sends them to another system. Now we shall look into them in detail. Inbound interface: In the below example, there is a global order entry system (Global OE) in which orders are entered. And there are 3 oracle ERP systems at each region (NA, EMEA & APAC).

When orders are entered in the global order entry system, based on the item availability at various regions order lines have to be split and sent to different regions. Here there is a necessity to develop interfaces in all the regional ERP systems to import order lines in their respective systems. Now lets see how this happens in detail. First we need to extract the data from Global OE system to our ERP system say NA region, next we need to check whether the data we got from Global OE system is valid or not and then finally we have to load into our base tables. So this concept involves the following steps: a. Extraction b. Transformation c. Loading This concept is popularly called ETL process. ETL refers to the methods involved in accessing and manipulating source data and loading it into target database. The entire inbound interface process is depicted in the following process:

The steps in ETL process are Mapping the data between source systems and target database. Cleansing of source data in staging area. Transforming cleansed source data and then loading into the target system. Outbound Interface: In the below example, Company Kaiser has acquired Truss tech solutions company. Both companies are maintained in different ERP systems.

Now Kaiser has to maintain all the Order entries even for Truss tech solutions, but the fulfillment happens in truss tech solutions. So when ever orders are placed on Truss tech solutions they are entered, booked in Kaiser ERP and these order details are extracted to Truss tech solutions for fulfillment. Here are the actual steps in this process: 1. Identify the eligible orders (Orders shipped from Truss tech solutions warehouse) 2. Extract these orders in a format agreed between the two systems (FTP the data files or just populate a staging table where a Middle ware is involved for data transfer)

Oracle Apps 4 Beginners: Introduction to Oracle Interfaces - 2

Project / Context In an ever changing business environment, the need for adopting and building more robust processes in an ERP implementation projects is not only essential but also very crucial for the success of the implementations. The requirement was to seamlessly integrate the Oracle R12 Applications with various other systems. The Interface needs to handle both history data migration as well as replication of ongoing data. Since the volume of history data was expected as very high, the performance of the Interface program needed to be at the optimum level. Since the data needs to flow into Oracle R12 system through various Interfaces from various systems, the business cannot afford to take any failures at Oracle end. Purpose For the requirement of building various interfaces in order to integrate seamlessly between Oracle R12 ERP system and various sub systems as well as external systems, we have developed a robust interface design solution which can be adopted by others as well. By following these guidelines, it would make the application maintenance smoother, flexible, productive, and also ensures seamless integration in an Oracle ERP Applications environment. Suggested solution includes various other functionalities such as usage of lookups for data mapping, error-handling, audit trails, parameter driven debug mode, etc. Interface Approach There are two interface development approaches: Open Interface Tables and Application Programming interfaces (APIs). Open Interface Table Approach This is the traditional approach where Oracle provides an Open Interface table(s), module wise and entity wise to bring the data from external systems into Oracle Applications. In this approach, the Open Interface table(s) needs to populated, then the respective standard concurrent program need to run to import the data into Oracle base tables. A detailed flow chart of this approach can be found in the subsequent slides. Application Programming Interface [API] In this approach, Oracle provides module wise and entity wise published PL/SQL packages called APIs to import the data into Oracle base tables. This provides a flexibility to back out the transaction at any time programmatically prior to issuing commit command. A detailed flow chart of this approach can be found in the subsequent slides. 1 Fail All Fail Concept This approach, works only for API based Interfaces as it provides the program level control on saving or backing out the data. The only exception to this is GL Interface, as it works with Group Id concept, means the Batch of Journals are submitted as one Batch with a Group Id, so by naturally as per the Journal Import concurrent program, the way its designed, it either imports all the Journals or none of a given Batch. This is explained again in details in a separate section below.