Results for “format_date”

AI-generated from documented ETRM metadata — verify critical details on the linked pages.

Overview

GMF_DATE_FORMATER is a legacy Oracle EBS PL/SQL package owned by the APPS schema and classified in the ETRM repository under the generic API category OTHER. The package exists to provide a single, reusable utility for formatting Oracle DATE values into caller-supplied string representations. Its name, the misspelled "FORMATER," and the source header identifier gmfforms.pls indicate a provenance in the Oracle Process Manufacturing (GMF) forms library, where date formatting routines were required by Oracle Forms-based user interfaces separate from the standard EBS FND_DATE and FND_STANDARD_DATE facilities.

In the context of EBS 12.1.1 and 12.2.2, the package predates the modern multi-org and globalization layers and remains an accepted legacy extension. It is not part of the base application date conversion framework; it is a lightweight wrapper that accepts a date, an explicit format mask, and returns a formatted string together with a numeric status code. Because it is declared AUTHID CURRENT_USER, it executes with the privileges of the calling schema rather than the definer, which affects how it must be granted and invoked in custom deployments.

Key Procedures and Functions

ETRM documents exactly one callable unit for this package:

• FORMAT_DATE — Accepts a source DATE value and a format mask supplied as a VARCHAR2, returns the formatted result as an OUT VARCHAR2, and reports completion through an OUT NUMBER status code. The procedure has no RETURN value because it is a procedure, not a function. The format mask allows the caller to request virtually any Oracle date format element, including the MMDDYY-style mask implied by common conversion requests, and the status code permits the caller to detect unsupported masks or conversion errors without relying on an exception handler.

No other procedures, functions, or overloads are documented. No package-level constants, variables, or initialization block are exposed.

Tables Accessed

No tables are documented as referenced through APPS synonyms, and the package body as published contains no DML or queries. GMF_DATE_FORMATER is therefore classified as a purely computational utility. It neither reads nor writes application data, so it cannot be used to join attribute values to master data and does not participate in any transaction, audit, or reconciliation path.

Usage Notes

Typical invocation patterns include:

• Oracle Forms and OAF callouts — Where the GMF form library required a compact date formatter independent of the standard FND_DATE routines.
• Custom PL/SQL — Called directly as APPS.GMF_DATE_FORMATER.FORMAT_DATE(...) from concurrent programs, database triggers, or interface scripts that need a consistent string rendering before writing to a flat file or staging interface.
• Legacy conversion routines — Because the procedure takes a mask, it is a convenient target for requests such as converting an epoch-derived DATE to an MMDDYY string; note that the package formats an Oracle DATE only and does not itself translate raw millisecond epoch values.

Because it is AUTHID CURRENT_USER and referenced by zero other packages, it carries no dependency risk to the EBS codebase and may be safely superseded by FND_DATE.DATE_TO_CHAR in new development. Existing calls should be preserved for regression stability during 12.1.1 to 12.2.2 upgrades.