Display hints, custom format method in VO, is there yet another way?

Question

Did you experience the same and had a solution?
Hi,
I am using JDeveloper 10.1.3.4 and looking for yet another way of customizing the display of an attribute of a view object.
I have two tables: BILL and AWARDS, with composite foreign key relationship (on the LDAP_UID and TERM fields) between them, as illustrated below.
The BILL table:
NAME       LDAP_UID    TERM   CREDIT_HRS
Tom Smith  tom.simth   200902       12.5
Jane Lopez jane.lopez  200906        4.0
The AWARD table:
LDAP_UID    TERM  SOURCE     APPLIED
tom.smith  200902 Perkins     2000.00
tom.smith  200906 Direct      1300.00
jane.lopez 200906 CN           500.00 At the business data model level, this is master(Bill)/detail(Awards) relationship. Bill is dragged from the data control palette to the page and displayed as a form, and Awards is dragged to the page as a table. When tom.smith logs in and chooses the 200902 TERM, the master and detail are joined on tom.smith=tom.smith and 200902=200902, so the $2,000.00 of Perkins loan is retrieved for him:
Name Tom Smith
Term 200902
Source    Applied  
Perkins   $2,000.00That works fine but not user friendly: the values in the TERMS column are a bit cryptic and need to be displayed in plain English, i.e., 200902 should be displayed as "Spring 2009" and 200906 as "Summer 2009". The display hints in the VO can not handle this. The only other way I know is writing a method in the Row class of the VO to do the translation. And this is the result:
Name Tom Smith
Term Spring 2009
Source        Applied  
No rows yet   Obviously, "Spring 2009" is used not only for display, but also for joining the master and detail tables. Of course "Spring 2009"!=200902, therefore no detail is retrieved for the user.
Question is: is there yet another way to customize the display, that does not affect the join of master and detail tables?
Many thanks for your help!
Newman

Answer 1

Hi, Chris,
That works!
I found the chapter where transient attribute is explained and an example is given creating a transient attribute in the entity object. It turned out that transient attribute works both in entity object and view object. I did it in the VO and it solves my problem.
I spent hours of time before posting that question, trying two different ways but neither worked. Your one sentence saved me a lot of time. I do appreciate you help very much!
Truly,
Newman