How to customize a LOV in OAF (VO Extension)?

OA Framework provides robust support for personalizing and extending the E-Business Suite
user interface and underlying business logic. The capabilities are largely achieved by leveraging
the OA Frameworks declarative architecture, and the object-oriented features of Java.
This post describes how to customize a LOV in an OAF Page and also make the LOV dependent
on a parent LOV. It can be done through a VO Extension and Personalization in R12. View
Objects are the queries that provide the data seen on a Self Service web page. Oracle offers many
attributes in each View Object, but often an additional attribute is needed. Oracle allows
developers to extend the delivered View Objects to meet this need.
The following iProcurement Requisition Page will be used for demonstration, but any page
developed using the OAF architecture is a candidate for this exercise.

Here we are about to customize the Expenditure Type LOV so that when creating an
iProcurement requisition and entering project related information, the Expenditure Types list of
values will present the user with a subset of expenditure types, instead of all expenditure types.

Analysis:
1] Check About this page:
To find all dependent objects of the base Oracle Application page you wish to extend, use the
About this page link shown at the bottom-left corner of the base page. The link renders the
About page which displays page definition, current session, and technology stack information for
that base page. (If you do not see the About this page link, verify that the FND_DIAGNOSTICS
profile option is enabled.)

2] Find the VO Object Name:

3] Fnd the SQL query behind the VO:

Implementation:
Now that we have identified the VO we need to extend, ExpenditureTypeNoAwardLovVO. we
need to setup our JDeveloper environment so that we can create a new View Object that contains
our extended code.
1] Setup Jdeveloper:
You can refer the below articles for this:
Initial Setup in JDeveloper for OAF Development
2] Create a New OA Workspace:
In the Applications Navigator right click the Applications Node and select New OA
Workspace.

Give a suitable name. Leave the directory path as your default myprojects folder in your JDev
Home, ensure that the Add a New OA Project check box is selected. Select OK.
3] Create a New Project:

Give a suitable project name. Leave the default directory as your myprojects folder in the JDev
Home. For a VO substitution the default package name will need to represent the VO file path on
JAVA_TOP with the exception that it must be prefixed with your custom application shortname,
the prefix can actually be anything you like however it is recommended that the custom
application shortname is used.
Click Next and complete the remaining steps.
4] Copy the required files from JAVA_TOP:
Next we need to copy the existing VO component from the apps server and import it into our
local file system. In order to do this we must setup a file structure on our local machine in our
project folder so we can copy the VO into it. Log onto the applications server and navigate to
$JAVA_TOP, change into the oracle/apps/icx/ directory (Or which ever product top you are
working with).
For that do the following:
1. cd $JAVA_TOP/oracle/apps
2. tar -cvf icx_top.tar icx .. repeat for as many modules as you might need.
3. FTP each .tar file to \jdevhome\jdev\myclasses.
4. Extract each .tar file in the \jdevhome\jdev\myclasses directory

5. Also extract each .tar file in the \jdevhome\jdev\myprojects directory.

Click the Refresh button on the Applications Navigator tab of JDeveloper, you should notice
that a new business components package under oracle.apps.pa has now appeared.
5] Create a new VO Object:
Now that we have the existing projects business components in our environment we need to
create our new VO object that will be used in place of the existing one.
Please note- We do not customize existing components in OA Framework. We extend the
existing ones which means creating a new object that extends the original and we notify the
framework that we want to use the new object rather than the seeded one.
5.1] Test the seeded VO:
We now need to test that the VO we want to substitute does not contain any java errors following
the download. Navigate to the VO in the applications navigator window right click the VO and
click edit.
If the VO opens without error then we are ready to move onto the next step. If you get an error
message saying that java errors exist in either the voNameImpl.java file or the
voNameRowImpl.java file then do the following:
1. Get the .class files.
2. Download a java deconpiler (ex:CAVAJ) and decompile the files to .java files and put it
in myprojects folder.
3. Remake the project.
5.2] Lunch the create new VO Object wizard:
Right click on the project node and select New. Select View Object under Business Tier >
ADF Business Components and click OK.

5.3] Give the details:

Specify the package as xxscm.oracle.apps.icx.lov.server (This component package will hold our
extended object so we need the custom application prefix). Specify the VO name as the name of
the custom application concatenated with the orginal VO name i.e.
XxScmExpenditureTypeNoAwardLovVO. Select the original VO in the extends box using the
browse button and select the original VO i.e.
oracle.apps.icx.lov.server.ExpenditureTypeNoAwardLovVO.
5.4] Modify the SQL Query:

On step 2 of the VO wizard you can see the SQL statement that we first saw when we were
analysing the page. Here add your modified query.Please note that you should add your
additional columns at the end.
In our example the initial query was:
1 SELECT et.expenditure_type,
2
3

et.sys_link_start_date_active,
et.sys_link_end_date_active,

1 AS dummy_number

5 FROM pa_expenditure_types_expend_v et
6 WHERE et.system_linkage_function = 'VI'
AND (TRUNC(SYSDATE) BETWEEN ET.EXPND_TYP_START_DATE_ACTIVE AND
7
NVL(ET.EXPND_TYP_END_DATE_ACTIVE, TRUNC(SYSDATE+1)))
AND (TRUNC(sysdate) BETWEEN et.sys_link_start_date_active AND
8
NVL(et.sys_link_end_date_active, TRUNC(sysdate +1)))

Now the modified query is:

01 SELECT DISTINCT
02 et.expenditure_type,
03 et.sys_link_start_date_active,
04 ET.SYS_LINK_END_DATE_ACTIVE,
05 1 AS dummy_number,

06 P.PROJECT_ID,
07 BV.BUDGET_VERSION_ID
08 FROM
09 PA_PROJECTS_ALL P,
10 PA_BUDGET_VERSIONS BV ,
11 PA_FIN_PLAN_TYPES_B PT,
12 PA_RESOURCE_ASSIGNMENTS RA,
13 PA_EXPENDITURE_TYPES_EXPEND_V ET
14 WHERE BV.PROJECT_ID = P.PROJECT_ID
15 AND BV.FIN_PLAN_TYPE_ID = PT.FIN_PLAN_TYPE_ID
16 AND BV.BUDGET_VERSION_ID = RA.BUDGET_VERSION_ID
17 AND PT.PLAN_CLASS_CODE='FORECAST'
18 AND BV.CURRENT_FLAG='Y'
19 and ET.EXPENDITURE_TYPE = RA.EXPENDITURE_TYPE
20 AND ET.SYSTEM_LINKAGE_FUNCTION = 'VI'
AND (TRUNC(SYSDATE) BETWEEN ET.EXPND_TYP_START_DATE_ACTIVE AND
NVL(ET.EXPND_TYP_END_DATE_ACTIVE, TRUNC(SYSDATE+1)))
AND (TRUNC(sysdate) BETWEEN et.sys_link_start_date_active AND
22
NVL(et.sys_link_end_date_active, TRUNC(sysdate +1)))
21

5.5] Generate the Java files:

Once we have clicked through to the end of the wizard the final step is to create the relevant java
files.
Now click Finish and the new business components package will be created containing our
new extended VO. Right click on the custom business components package and select Make,
this will compile the Impl and RowImpl java files.
6] Create a Substitution:
Now that we have our newly extended VO, we need to create a substitution file. This substitution
file will be an xml based file that will contain a mapping from the old VO to the new VO, we
will use this file to tell Oracle Application to use our newly extended VO rather than the old one
by uploading it to the MDS repository using the JPX Import tool.

Right click on your project node and select Project Properties, click Substitutions under the
Business Components menu. In the Available pane select the original VO , and in the right
hand Substitute pane select the new VO. Once you have done this click the Add button and
select OK.
In your JDev home in the myprojects folder you will see a file called projectName.jpx. This is
your substitution file and we will use this later when we deploy the substitution.

Deployment:
1] Deploy the the relevant java and xml files to java top:
Right click on the project node and select New, select Jar File under the General >
Deployment Profiles menu. Name the profile as something meaningful. Leave the directory set
as the default myprojects folder and click OK.

In the deployment profile properties deselect the Include Manifest File option. On the filters
menu deselect the root folder and navigate to the xxscm.oracle.apps.icx.lov.server directory,
select all the files in this directory and click OK.

You will see in JDeveloper that you now have a deployment profile listed under you application
sources node, right click the .deploy file and select Deploy to JAR file, You will see a deploy
tab appear next to the compile log and this will confirm that the deployment was successful. If
you experience issues with compilation i.e. there are issues with some of the files in your project
that are not connected to your custom files then simply remove them from the project by
selecting the top level component package i.e. oracle.app.pa and click the Exclude Project
Content button (Little file symbol with a red cross on it) and re-try the deployment.
Inspect your myprojects folder and you will see you now have a Deploy directory, in this
directory will be your jar file ready for deployment to the apps server. FTP the jar file in binary
format to a convienient directory on the apps server. Then run the below command:
jar -xvf /$JAVA_TOP/XxScmRestrictExpTypes_Deploy.jar
2] Deploy the Substitution file:
You can run a script something like below to deploy the substitution file:
01 echo

"--------------------------------------------"

02 echo

"Please enter the following details :"

03 echo

"--------------------------------------------"

04 echo Enter APPS Password :

05 read apps_pw
06
07 echo "Enter Host TNS DATABASE Server name:>"
08 read v_host
09
10 echo "Enter Host Database TNS Port Number:"
11 read v_port
12
13 echo "Enter Host Database SID name:"
14 read v_sid
15
16 ########################################################################
17 echo "Importing VO Extension..."
18 ########################################################################
19
20 java oracle.jrad.tools.xml.importer.JPXImporter \
$XXSCM_TOP/install/XxScmRestrictExpTypes.jpx -username apps -password
21
$apps_pw \
-dbconnection "(DESCRIPTION= (ADDRESS= (PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=$v_host)
22
(PORT=$v_port)) (CONNECT_DATA= (SID=$v_sid) ) )"
23
24 echo "Importing VO Extension successful!!!!..."

Finally restart the webserver (bounce Apache) so that you can see your changes in the
application.

Creating Personalizations:
1] Add a new attribute:
Go to Functional Administrator responsibility and go to the path
/oracle/apps/icx/lov/webui/ExpenditureTypeLovRN
Create a new Item and Give the below details:
Item Style
Id
Datatype
Rendered

Message Styled Text

XxScmProjectId
Number
False

View Attribute
View Instance

ProjectId
ExpenditureTypeNoAwardLovVO

2] Add a LOV Mapping to make the LOV dependent ( Here Expenditure Type LOV is
dependent to the Projects LOV):
Go to Functional Administrator responsibility and go to the
path /oracle/apps/icx/por/req/webui/CheckoutSummaryPG
Create a new Item and Give the below details:
Item Style
Id
Criteria Item
* LOV Region Item

Lov Map
XxScmProjectIdLovMap
ProjectIdExpense
XxScmProjectId

Great!!Its over now. Go to iProcurement Requisition Page and check the new Expenditure
Type LOV.