A flexfield is a flexible data field that your organization can customize to your business needs without programming.
Oracle Applications uses two types of flexfields,
key flexfields and descriptive flexfields.
A key flexfield is a field you can customize to enter multi-segment values such as part numbers, account numbers, and so on. A descriptive flexfield is a field you customize to enter additional information for which your Oracle Applications product has not already provided a field.
Basic Business Needs
Oracle Applications flexfields let you satisfy the following business needs:
Have "intelligent fields"--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 or the combination of values that you enter in intelligent fields.
Have the structure of an intelligent field change depending on data in your application.
Capture additional information if you so choose.
Customize data fields to your meet your business needs without programming.
Query intelligent fields for very specific information.