Attribute Types (Oracle Workflow Developer's Guide)

Oracle Workflow Developer's Guide
Release 2.6.3
Part Number B10284-02


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Attribute Types

There are ten attribute types, as shown below. The type determines what values are acceptable and how the attribute is used.

Text--The attribute value is a string of text.

Number--The attribute value is a number with the optional format mask you specify.

Date--The attribute value is a date with the optional format mask you specify.

Lookup--The attribute value is one of the lookup code values in a specified lookup type.

Form--The attribute value is an Oracle Applications internal form function name and its optional form function parameters. This attribute type is not relevant for the standalone version of Oracle Workflow.

If you include a form-type attribute in a notification message as a message attribute, the notification, when viewed from the Notification Details web page, displays an attached form icon that lets users drill down to the referenced form. See: Overview of Menus and Function Security, Oracle Applications Developer's Guide.

URL--The attribute value is a Universal Resource Locator (URL) to a network location. If you reference a URL attribute in a notification message as a message attribute, the notification, when viewed from the Notification Details web page or as an HTML-formatted e-mail, displays an anchor to the URL specified by the URL attribute. The user can complete an activity or see additional information related to the activity by accessing that URL.

Document--The attribute value is an attached document. You can specify the following types of documents in the default value field:

PL/SQL document--a document representing data from the database as a character string, generated from a PL/SQL procedure.

PL/SQL CLOB document--a document representing data from the database as a character large object (CLOB), generated from a PL/SQL procedure. The CLOB can contain plain text, HTML, an Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) document, a Microsoft Rich Text Format (RTF) document, or, if your database version is Oracle9i Database or higher, binary data encoded to base64.

PL/SQL BLOB document--a document representing data from the database as a binary large object (BLOB), generated from a PL/SQL procedure. The BLOB can contain an image or other types of application files that are stored as binary data.

See: To Define a Document Attribute.

Role--The attribute value is the internal name of a role. If a message attribute of type role is included in a notification message, the attribute automatically resolves to the role's display name, eliminating the need for you to maintain separate attributes for the role's internal and display names. Also when you view the notification from a web browser, the role display name is a hypertext link to the e-mail address for that role. To set a default value for the attribute, you must initially load roles from the database. See: Roles.

Attribute--The attribute value is the internal name of another existing item type attribute that you want to maintain references to in a process.

Event--The attribute value is a Business Event System event message in the standard WF_EVENT_T structure. See: Event Message Structure, Oracle Workflow API Reference.

Note: If you store an event message in an item attribute of type event, you can access the event data within that event message by creating an item attribute of type URL and setting the value of the URL attribute to reference the event data. See: SetItemAttribute, Oracle Workflow API Reference.


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