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Introducing NoetixViews

Ownership

The Director of the Business Support Center is responsible for ensuring that this document is necessary, reflects actual practice, and supports University policy.

Section Objectives

At the end of this section, you should be able to:

Overview

This chapter presents an overview of NoetixViews. It summarizes the product’s main features and lists the hardware and software required to run NoetixViews.

NoetixViews is a set of business views of the data held in the Integrated System Applications. NoetixViews includes an extensive on-line Help system that is available from both the client and the server. The Help system assists you in finding the right data and understanding its usefulness.

NoetixViews is a purchased product that works in concert with the latest releases of the Integrated System Applications.  The Integrated System allows the owning institution to customize the Applications while the query tools in Discoverer allow you, the end user, to retrieve data from those Applications. NoetixViews improves this process by providing information about the Integrated System data so that it can be more easily identified as being useful to your query.

Compatible

NoetixViews is compatible with the Integrated System Applications database.

What are Views?

Database views enable you to retrieve and review data stored in the Integrated System in a very efficient manner. Views do not contain data that can be manipulated; views are a “composite picture” of data obtained from base tables. Views have the characteristics of tables (for example, they contain rows and columns); but since they contain no actual data, they are sometimes referred to as virtual tables. Also, since there is no actual data in a view, data cannot be modified in a Noetix View.

Types of NoetixViews

NoetixViews offers three types of views of the Integrated System data:

Views vary in complexity from the simple basic view to the most complex cross-functional view. When selecting a view, select a level of complexity that appears to be the most appropriate for your information requirements.

Basic

Basic views display data that appears in the corresponding Integrated System data entry screen or in a block within a screen. The data in basic views is extracted from one to four tables.

Value-Added

Value-added views display data that is a combination of data appearing on several Integrated System data entry forms. The data in value-added views is extracted from four to eight tables.

Cross-Functional

Cross-functional views are the most complex and, therefore, take the most time to run. These views display data that is contained in several Integrated System Application modules. The data in cross-functional views is extracted from 8 to 14 tables.

UVA Custom Views

A forth type of view has been created specific to the UVA Integrated System environment.  These views can be easily identified by their naming convention that always begins with UVA.  They are referred to as UVA Custom views.

Retrieving Data with NoetixViews

Roles

Like the Integrated System, NoetixViews uses Roles (similar to responsibilities) to control access to data. A Role is a collection of rights to a set of NoetixViews that are granted to a database user. Roles are used as a security feature to limit and control access to data and to reduce the amount of data viewed.

In order to reduce complexity, Roles provided by NoetixViews show you only the views you are allowed by your Integrated System UVA ODS Specialist responsibility.

NoetixViews uses a prefix system to identify and organize the various Roles. The prefix assigned to a Role is the prefix of every view accessible to that Role. First, a simple abbreviation is chosen for each Applications Module, such as “AP” for Accounts Payable and “PO” for Purchasing. Then, each occurrence of a particular Applications module is labeled, for example:

These abbreviations are then used as a prefix to the Role name, for example:

AP_Payables Role and PO_Purchasing Role

Using the Built-in Hints

Several types of hints have been incorporated into the NoetixViews to assist you in finding data in the database. These hints help you find data quickly. The hints consist of:

View Name Hints

The Role name designations described in the “ Roles” section of this chapter are used as a prefix to the view names to indicate which Role contains the view. The Role designations are added to view names as follows:

Search By Columns Hints

Database management systems such as IS use indexes to find specific pieces of data without having to perform time-consuming scans of the database. NoetixViews refers to these indexed columns in your database tables as Search By columns. The Search By column names are prefixed with “A$”. For example, in the AP_Invoice_Payments View, the Search By columns are:

Searching on Search By columns returns query results in a reasonable length of time. This occurs because the less data the server has to search through, the quicker results will be returned.

Note

Whenever possible, you should use Search By columns to locate data. If you do not use Search By columns, the data may still be located; however, it may take many minutes or hours to return, because the server has to scan all the rows in the table. The description of the view and the descriptions of the columns will give you information about which columns to search by.

Flexfield Name Hints

NoetixViews supports both key and descriptive flexfields (DFFs).  DFFs allow organizations to name and store site-specific information.

NoetixViews adds a prefix to the name of your DFF to group them for easy access. The flexfield name prefix consists of an abbreviation followed by “$”. This prefix is added to the flexfield names assigned at your site. For example, at a particular site, NoetixViews may rename the Account_Flexfield_US key flexfield associated with a distribution line, Distr$Account_Flexfield_US.

Similarly, the descriptive flexfield segment TAX_REPORTING_NAME associated with the Vendors descriptive flexfield segment is renamed VEND$TAX_REPORTING_NAME.  The names of the flexfields for your site are listed in the NoetixViews Columns Help screen. All the flexfields from your Integrated System Application’s base tables are included in the view.

Descriptive Flexfields

Descriptive flexfields are used to store supplemental information relevant to your business site. You can retrieve different information from flexfields depending upon the context. For example, you may store an employee’s social security number in one descriptive flexfield in an Expense Report form. However, if the Expense Report form is for a non-employee, you may store other information such as Vendor ID or Employer Identification Number in another descriptive flexfield.

To view a descriptive flexfield in the Integrated System Applications form, move to the [ ] indicator. The flexfield is displayed in a pop-up window. An example is a descriptive flexfield reserved for an approving manager’s comment.

The same descriptive flexfield is displayed in NoetixViews as the INV$SQ_IMG_APPROVAL_COMMENT Column. 

The HRMS module contains numerous flexfields so that the Schools/Departments can document and track certain actions.

Key Flexfields

Key flexfields are composed of several segments that contain important or key data. For example, UVA’s GL account string includes these segments:

In cases where it is appropriate, NoetixViews breaks out the key flexfield, allowing you to search on the individual segments. If, for example, the Distr$Account_Flexfield key flexfield consists of these segments:

NoetixViews defines these "Search By" columns:

Join To Columns Hints

NoetixViews constructed the majority of table joins when the views were generated for your Integrated System Application(s). For information on the types of views available, refer to the description of basic, value-added, and cross-functional views in “ Types of NoetixViews” earlier in this chapter.

If all the information advanced users need is not available in a predefined Noetix View, they may wish to join several NoetixViews together. Views can be joined by using the Join To columns defined in the various views. These columns are identified with a prefix of “Z$”. They can only be used to join to other tables or views with the same column name. One of the Join To column names must be the same as a view name in order to create a successful join. 

Flag Columns Hints

Flag columns, such as Posted_Flag and Reversal_Flag, are converted to “Y” or “N” by NoetixViews for consistency, regardless of how they are stored in the database.

Code Columns Hints

Definitions of values for columns that have a “_Code” suffix can be found in the NoetixViews Columns Help. For example, the values for the Line_Type_Lookup_Code column are shown below.

Value Description

Ensuring Good Performance

This section summarizes ways in which you can make sure you are using NoetixViews efficiently. Some of the ways you can improve performance are listed in the following paragraphs.

Use the Built-in Hints

Use the Appropriate View

Using Help

Introduction

NoetixViews has developed an extensive Help system that enables you to locate the information that you need in a quick and efficient manner. The Help system is arranged so that you may quickly navigate to the particular topic that you need information on. It contains information on all areas of NoetixViews, including:

Help Contents Screen

The Help Contents screen identifies the IS Applications Release with which the installed version of NoetixViews operates. This screen also lists the Roles that enable you to access the views; fill out an Integrated System Responsibility Change Request form, and submit it to your data security contact. 

In this screen, you can also locate the Role that holds the information that you need Help on. For example, if the Role GL Ledger has been granted to you and you need Help on retrieving data, click on this Role name for information on all the views and columns available under this Role.

Roles Views List

There is a Help section with a Views List for each Role defined within your configuration. Each section lists a brief description of the views available to each particular Role and allows you to jump to detailed descriptions of the views.

The Help Contents Screen also contains a list of each view name, the module that it belongs to, the type of view that it is (i.e. Basic, Value-Added, and Cross-Functional), and the business function that the view represents. If you click on a view name, the View Description screen is displayed.

View Description Screen

When you select a view name, a Help screen similar to the screen above is displayed.

This screen contains:

Column List Screen

When you click the Columns link, a Help screen similar to the following is displayed.

The Columns screen lists and describes each NoetixViews Column:

…continued

Related Views Screen

To get to the Related Views Screen, click on the See Also link from the View Description Screen. This displays a list of views that contain information that may be useful to you. For example, the views listed could contain shared column names, common business functions, or any information useful if you are using the current view.

Examples

If you click on the Examples Hypertext link in the View Description Screen, a screen will appear similar to the one below:  This screen contains possible questions for each view. Clicking on the Hint link will bring you to a screen with a possible answer to your question. The answer might include a set of instructions, a link, or the name of a view that contains the information you need.

Keyword Search

You can locate Help information quickly by clicking on the Search button on the Help System window toolbar. The Search button opens a window in which you can type your keyword / column name in a text field or select a search term from the pulldown list.  All Help topics associated with the search term are listed and you can select one to display. If a column name is selected, the NoetixViews that contain that column are listed. By selecting one of the NoetixViews, you are then taken to the list of columns for that view.

Summary

In this lesson, you should have learned how to: