Oracle Open Interfaces Lession 1

What is an Interface ?
An Interface allows us to Import data from a variety of environments, including our system, previous system data collection devices , external systems, and others in the easiest way possible.
Review the results of import runs, including validation, review update , re imports, and error identification.
Export data from Oracle Applications products for use in other systems.

Interface Tables
Interface Tables: Throughout Oracle Applications products, Oracle Developers have developed Interface tables and programs. Tables allows us to load data, and then to run an Application concurrent program. That concurrent program will take the data from the Interface Table, Validate it, and Import it into our Application Instance.

There are numerous Interface tables in the Oracle Applications products to help with the importation of data.
Application Programming Interfaces(APIs) : API's provide tighter integration to Oracle Applications than can be provided with Interface Tables.

Several Oracle Applications products allow for data upload and download via spreadsheets. The spreadsheet formats are predefined. The mechanics of the upload or download are quite simple.

Oracle Applications also support data uploads and downloads to Oracle Discoverer and word processing files.

Open Interface Overview
Through open interfaces in Oracle Financials, we also can import historical data from our previous accounting, sales order, or other management systems to keep our records consistent and up-to-date. We can review the results of our import run and identify which data has been successfully imported and which errors have occurred during the import process.
We must select a tool for writing a feeder program to extract data from the printed reports, flat file, relational database, or other repository of application information of our existing application system.

Use feeder program to populate an Oracle Application import table with the information we want to introduce to Oracle Financials system.

SQL*Loader is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for writing a feeder program because it helps us to map elements of character delimited or fixed format file, such as a listing or flat file, and to specify which columns of which tables they populate.