Search Results fnd_const




Overview
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Overview

FND_CONST is a foundational utility package body in the APPS schema of Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.1 and 12.2.2. Its responsibility is narrow but pervasive: it centralizes the definition of commonly used literal constants and simple character-formatting helpers that other Oracle Application Object Library components rely upon. Rather than scattering hard-coded single-character values or control codes throughout application code, the Oracle EBS development standards encourage referencing a single, well-known package so that the meaning of these values remains self-documenting and consistent across the product line. FND_CONST therefore serves as a low-level building block of the FND (Foundation) technology stack, providing named symbols for whitespace and carriage-control characters, as well as a boolean type convention. Because it is classified as an OTHER API in the documented package metadata, it is not a business-facing interface; it is an internal infrastructure package exposed publicly only because PL/SQL requires referenced code to be visible to callers.

Key Procedures and Functions

The documented package metadata lists six procedures and functions. The named members are LOCAL_CHR, NEWLINE, TAB, and BOOL. These are character- and type-oriented helpers rather than business logic routines.

  • LOCAL_CHR — returns the character corresponding to a numeric code while respecting the session character set. It allows application code to construct control or whitespace characters portably instead of embedding literal byte values.
  • NEWLINE — supplies the newline (line-feed) character used when concatenating text, formatting messages, or building multi-line output strings.
  • TAB — supplies the horizontal tab character, used for alignment and readability in generated text and reports.
  • BOOL — provides a boolean representation or conversion helper, allowing code that cannot use the native PL/SQL BOOLEAN (for example, values passed to or from SQL or stored in tables) to express true/false consistently.

Parameter lists are not reproduced here; the documented metadata identifies the member names and their intended purpose only.

Tables Accessed

No tables are documented as referenced by FND_CONST through APPS synonyms. This is consistent with the package's role as a constant and character-code provider: the values it exposes are compile-time literals or deterministic character generation routines, so no database I/O is required. The package has no documented read or write operations against application tables, and consequently it introduces no transactional or locking behavior of its own.

Usage Notes

FND_CONST is referenced by twelve other packages within the EBS schema, confirming its position as a shared utility. Typical invocation occurs from PL/SQL code — whether in Oracle Forms libraries, concurrent program logic, or custom extensions — that needs a portable newline or tab character, a localized character, or a standardized boolean value. Developers writing custom code in the APPS environment can safely call these members, but should treat FND_CONST as an internal Oracle-supplied dependency: it carries no supported extension points and does not appear to be referenced by database objects other than the packages that consume it. Because the object is documented as VALID and depends only on the SYS STANDARD package, it is a stable, dependency-free component. Customizations should reference it rather than redefining equivalent constants, preserving consistency with Oracle's own formatting conventions. No public, externally supported API contract should be assumed beyond the documented members.