Row Flattening

Row flattening optimizes parent-child information for run-time performance by storing

additional rows in a table for instantly finding all descendants of a parent without initiating a
CONNECT BY query. Row flattening eliminates recursive queries, which allows operations to
perform across an entire subtree more efficiently.

To store row flattened data for the specific tree structure, users can either use the
central FND_TREE_NODE_RF table or they can register their own row flattened table. For
example, in a table, if Corporation is the parent of Sales Division (Corporation-Sales Division),
and Sales Division is the parent of Region (Sales Division-Region), a row-flattened table
contains an additional row with Corporation directly being the parent of Region (Corporation-
Region).

Column Flattening

Column flattening optimizes parent-child information for run-time performance by storing an

additional column in a table for all parents of a child.

To store column flattened data for the specific tree structure, users can either use the
central FND_TREE_NODE_CF table or they can register their own column flattened table. For
example, in a table, if Corporation is the parent of Sales Division (Corporation-Sales Division),
and Sales Division is the parent of Region (Sales Division-Region), a flattened table in addition
to these columns, contains three new columns: Region, Sales Division, and Corporation.
Although positioned next to each other, the column Region functions at the lower level and
Corporation at the higher level, retaining the data hierarchy.

Column Flattened Entity Objects

In the absence of a column-flattened table, if you need to generate the business component view
objects for your tree structure for the flattened table, use the tree management infrastructure to
correctly provide the fully qualified name of the entity object for the column flattened table.

ADF Business Component View Objects

View objects from the ADF business components can also be used as data sources, eliminating
the need to create new types of data sources. This field is to store the fully qualified name for the
business component view object generated by the tree management for business intelligence
reporting and usage The business component view object is a combination of the tree data source
and column flattened entity. Using this option prevents data redundancy and promotes greater
reuse of existing data, thereby improving the performance of the tree structure.