Interfaces and Conversions

 Overview:

Oracle provides flexible tools in the form of Interface programs to import the master and transactional data like Customers, Invoices, and Sales Orders etc from external systems into Oracle Applications or to transfer the data from one module to another module.

There are 2 types of interfaces:

1)Inbound Interface: will be used to upload the data from legacy system (Flat files) into Oracle Applications base tables.
2)Outbound Interface:  will be used to extract the data from oracle Database tables into the flat files.

Conversion/Interface Strategy:

1. Data Mapping

   During the data mapping process, list of all the data sets and data elements that will need to be moved into the Oracle tables as part of conversion are identified. Data mapping tables are prepared as part of this activity that show what are the data elements that are needed by the target system to meet the business requirements and from where they will be extracted in the old system.

2. Download Programs

   After the conversion data mapping is complete, download programs are developed that are used to extract the identified conversion data elements from the current systems in the form of an ASCII flat file. The structure of the flat file must match the structure of the Oracle standard interface tables. These flat files generated may be in text form or a comma or space delimited, variable or fixed format data file.

3. Upload Program

   Once the data has been extracted to a flat file, it is then moved to the target file system and the data from the file is loaded into user defined staging tables in the target database using SQL Loader or UTL_FILE utilities. Then programs are written and run which validate the data in the staging tables and insert the same into the Oracle provided standard Interface tables.

4. Interface Program

   Once the interface tables are populated, the respective interface program (each data element interface has a specific interface program to run) is submitted. The interface programs validate the data, derive and assign the default values and ultimately populate the production base tables.

   A typical path to transfer the data from Legacy System to Oracle Apps: