Flexfields provide you with the features you need to satisfy the following business needs:
Customize your applications to conform to your current business practice for accounting codes, product codes, and other codes.
Customize your applications to capture data that would not otherwise be tracked by your application.
Have "intelligent fields" that are fields comprised of one or more segments, where each segment has both a value and a meaning.
Rely upon your application to validate the values and the combination of values that you enter in intelligent fields.
Have the structure of an intelligent field change depending on data in your form or application data.
Customize data fields to your meet your business needs without programming.
Query intelligent fields for very specific information.
What is the distinction between flexfields and application features? Flexfields, while they are a major feature of the Oracle E-Business Suite as a whole, are merely a mechanism to provide many application features. Key flexfields provide a flexible way for the Oracle E-Business Suite to represent objects such as accounting codes, part numbers, job descriptions, and more. For example, the Accounting Flexfield is a feature that uses a key flexfield to represent accounting codes throughout most of the Oracle E-Business Suite applications. Similarly, descriptive flexfields provide a flexible way for the Oracle E-Business Suite to provide customizable "expansion space" in forms, as well as a way to implement context-sensitive fields that appear only when needed. Both types of flexfield let you customize Oracle E-Business Suite features without programming.