Search Results calendar_generate_ical




Overview
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Overview

APPS.PER_CALENDAR_UTIL is a utility package within the Oracle E-Business Suite Human Resources (PER) product family. Its business function is to generate text in the iCalendar (RFC 5545) interchange format from Oracle EBS date and time data, enabling the delivery of calendar events as standards-compliant .ics payloads. The package is classified as a UTIL API in ETRM, reflecting its role as a low-level formatting helper rather than a transactional business API. The two public procedures both carry the name CALENDAR_GENERATE_ICAL and return the formatted calendar text through an OUT NOCOPY VARCHAR2 parameter named ICAL. The package is typically used where EBS must publish events such as interviews, assignments, meetings, or scheduled activities to external calendar clients including Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, and Google Calendar. The header comment in the source identifies revision 120.0.12010000.4, dated 19 November 2008, which establishes that the utility is present in both the 12.1.1 and 12.2.2 release lines.

Key Procedures and Functions

ETRM documents two overloaded procedures, both named CALENDAR_GENERATE_ICAL. The distinction between the two lies in how the event start and end time values are supplied.

  • CALENDAR_GENERATE_ICAL (DATE overload) — This overload accepts event start and end dates together with start and end times supplied as DATE datatypes. It is intended for callers that already hold time information in native Oracle date objects. In addition to the temporal inputs, the parameters accommodate subject, location, description, access classification (defaulting to PUBLIC), time zone, iCalendar method (defaulting to PUBLISH), a flag to ignore the time zone, a mail-to address, and a primary key value used to correlate the generated event with its source record. The formatted output is returned in the ICAL OUT parameter.
  • CALENDAR_GENERATE_ICAL (VARCHAR2 overload) — This overload accepts event start and end dates together with start and end times supplied as VARCHAR2 strings, along with a DTTIMEFORMAT parameter that specifies the expected time format. It is intended for callers whose time values originate from character-based sources, such as form fields or interface tables, and therefore require an explicit format mask. The remaining parameters mirror the DATE overload: subject, location, description, access, time zone, method, ignore-time-zone flag, mail-to address, ICAL output, and primary key.

Tables Accessed

The ETRM documentation records only DUAL as a referenced table, accessed through an APPS synonym. This is consistent with the package's design as a pure formatting utility: the overloads assemble an iCalendar string from the values passed by the caller and perform no persistence or retrieval against EBS transactional tables. No INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE activity is documented, and the package holds no data of its own.

Usage Notes

Because the package is a UTIL-class API, it is not exposed directly through an end-user form. It is typically invoked from custom PL/SQL code, from Oracle Workflow notification or event handlers, or from concurrent programs and Oracle Application Framework pages that require an .ics attachment or download. ETRM records that the package is referenced by one other package, indicating that at least one shipped or custom object depends on it for calendar generation. Implementers should note that the output is delivered via an OUT NOCOPY parameter, so callers must declare a sufficiently large VARCHAR2 variable to receive the complete iCalendar content. Time zone handling is governed by the TIMEZONE and IGNORE_TIME_ZONE parameters; when IGNORE_TIME_ZONE is set to TRUE, the event is emitted without time-zone qualification. The PRIMARY_KEY parameter allows the generated event to be uniquely identified, which is useful for update and cancellation handling in iCalendar consumers.