ADF 11g - Using LOV's for Convenience, not Validation

In an existing Oracle Forms application we are modernizing for a customer, the forms in places contain LOV’s that exist on the field for convenience, but not for validation.  That is, a user can select an item from the LOV or they can enter text.  The text they enter will not get added to the table referenced in the LOV, just the current data entry record.

When you create an LOV on an attribute in ADF 11g you can tell ADF what type of control to use.  For this type of control we want an Input Text with List Of Values.  This control will then be placed on the jsp page when you drag and drop the attribute from your Data Controls panel.  When it creates the control, it will also create a validator for the control, JDeveloper actually does this for all controls and it allows for immediate feedback when a mandatory field is not entered or the type of data does not fit the specified format, or in this case, the entered data does not match a value in the LOV list.  In order to allow the user to enter a value not in the list, you need to remove the validator.

In our case, this has the benefit of looking up a description and displaying it in another field when a existing value in entered.  If an existing value is not entered, nothing is displayed in the description field.