Search Results get_dff_column_values

Overview

OKC_TIME_UTIL_PUB is a public PL/SQL package owned by the APPS schema in Oracle E-Business Suite. It belongs to the Oracle Contracts (OKC) module and is classified as a public API (PUB), meaning its procedures and functions are intended to be called from external code, including customizations, other Oracle EBS modules, and integration layers. The package header declares AUTHID CURRENT_USER, so all SQL statements execute under the privileges of the invoking session rather than the definer, and it instantiates global constants inherited from OKC_API such as G_APP_NAME, G_PKG_NAME, and the standard error tokens G_SQLERRM_TOKEN, G_SQLCODE_TOKEN, and G_INVALID_VALUE. A dedicated constant, G_DATE_ERROR, holds the message text for invalid date ranges.

The core business purpose of the package is time and duration arithmetic for contracts. Contracts frequently express terms in periods (days, months, years) rather than fixed dates, and downstream processes require consistent conversion between a start date plus a duration and a concrete end date. OKC_TIME_UTIL_PUB centralizes that logic, together with helpers that resolve descriptive flexfield metadata and version-set information used by the Contracts rules engine.

Key Procedures and Functions

• GET_DURATION — Derives the most suitable period and duration implied by a supplied start date and end date. It returns the duration quantity and the associated time unit so that callers can represent the interval in the most natural grain.
• GET_ENDDATE — Performs the inverse calculation, returning the end date computed from a start date, a time unit, and a duration. This is the principal utility for materializing computed contract expiration dates.
• GET_APP_ID — Resolves the application identifier required to locate flexfield and rule metadata correctly, ensuring callers pass the right context for OKC structures.
• GET_RULE_DF_NAME — Returns the descriptive flexfield name associated with a rules definition, allowing generic code to map a rule to its underlying DFF structure.
• GET_RULE_DEFS_USING_VS — Retrieves rule definitions that reference a given version set, supporting rule evaluation in the Contracts rules engine.
• GET_DFF_COLUMN_VALUES — Returns descriptive flexfield column values, which is the routine most frequently targeted by the search term "get_dff_column_values." It gives callers programmatic access to DFF attribute values without hand-coding concatenated segment references.
• GET_TVE_IDS — Resolves time-version or version-set entity identifiers used when evaluating rule and term validity across effective-dated records.

The package exposes nine documented procedures and functions in total. Parameter lists are not reproduced here; callers should reference the packaged specification in the database for exact signatures.

Tables Accessed

The documented metadata does not enumerate the base tables read or written by OKC_TIME_UTIL_PUB. Based on its documented function, the package operates principally on OKC rule definitions, version-set entities, and descriptive flexfield metadata, typically accessed through APPS synonyms. The DFF-related routines read flexfield definition and segment value structures, while the rule-oriented routines read contract rule definition tables filtered by application and version set.

Usage Notes

OKC_TIME_UTIL_PUB is referenced by approximately 50 other packages within the E-Business Suite, which confirms its role as shared infrastructure rather than an entry-point API invoked directly by end users. Typical invocation occurs from Oracle Contracts forms and concurrent programs that must compute or display contract durations and expiration dates, from the rules engine when evaluating rule definitions and version sets, and from custom PL/SQL that needs standardized date arithmetic or DFF value retrieval instead of bespoke logic. Because the package is declared public and uses AUTHID CURRENT_USER, custom code should grant the invoking schema appropriate privileges on the underlying OKC objects and should check the returned return-status out parameter, comparing it against the standard OKC_API status constants, before consuming results.