Introduction to Cross References
Cross references enable you to dynamically map values for equivalent entities created in different applications.
Note:
The cross referencing feature enables you to dynamically integrate values between applications, whereas domain value maps enable you to specify values at design time and edit values at runtime. For more information about domain value maps, see Working with Domain Value Maps and Using Oracle SOA Composer with Domain Value Maps.
When you create or update objects in one application, you may also want to propagate the changes to other applications. For example, when a new customer is created in an SAP application, you may want to create an entry for the same customer in your Oracle E-Business Suite application named EBS. However, the applications that you are integrating may be using different entities to represent the same information. For example, for each new customer in an SAP application, a new row is inserted in its Customer database with a unique identifier such as SAP_001. When the same information is propagated to an Oracle E-Business Suite application and a Siebel application, the new row should be inserted with different identifiers such as EBS_1001 and SBL001. In such cases, you need some type of functionality to map these identifiers with each other so that they can be interpreted by different applications to be referring to the same entity. This can be done by using cross references.