For more information about the general look and feel of widgets, see the Oracle E-Business Suite User Interface Standards for Forms-Based Products.
The following information applies to all text items.
In general, most text items use the TEXT_ITEM property class.
Use the TEXT_ITEM_DISPLAY_ONLY property class on fields that do not allow a user to type, but must support scrolling and or querying. Some date fields use this property class. In cases where the user must tab to display-only fields located on a part of the canvas that is not immediately visible, you may override the Keyboard Navigable property inherited from the property class.
Use the TEXT_ITEM_MULTILINE property class on all multiline text items.
Use TEXT_ITEM_DATE for date fields unless the item is display only.
Apply the CREATION_OR_LAST_UPDATE property class to the items containing the WHO date information, CREATION_DATE and LAST_UPDATE_DATE.
Set the maximum query length to 255 to allow for complex query criteria.
This trigger fires when the field value changes. Also, a Required field is not enforced until record-level validation. Therefore you may need to write logic that specifically accounts for a NULL value.
To support bidirectional languages such as Arabic, do not use Left or Right justification (numeric text items can use Right justification). Use Start and End instead. You may use Center where appropriate.
Generally the property class sets the correct justification, unless you need to specify Right or Center.
Date fields that the user enters should use the Calendar.
See: The Calendar
For date fields, use the DATE data type unless the user needs to enter time. Use the DATETIME data type to require the user to enter time.
To default a form field to the current date without the time, use $$DBDATE$$. To default a form field to the current date and time, use $DBDATETIME$$.
Create date fields as 11 characters without time, or 20 characters with time.
You do not need to specify a format mask in the item. Oracle Forms defaults the format correctly for each language from the environment variable NLS_DATE_FORMAT.
Oracle E-Business Suite currently requires an NLS_DATE_FORMAT setting of DD-MON-RR. Forms date fields that are 11 or 20 characters long will display a four-character year (DD-MON-YYYY) automatically.
In general, validate your date fields at the record level rather than at the item level.
Record level validation allows the user to correct errors more easily, especially in a From Date/To Date situation. After entering an incorrect date (last year instead of next year), the user should not need to change first the To Date before correcting the From Date.