Results for “igs_ge_number”

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

Overview

IGS_GE_NUMBER is a general utility package in the Oracle EBS Applications (APPS) schema, owned by the Student System / Higher Education product family (identified by the IGS prefix, denoting the OSS/Student Systems modules). It was authored as a standalone number-conversion helper, distinct from the earlier canonical number utilities that shipped with earlier releases. Its header comment explicitly states its purpose: it is a "Replacement of canonical_to_number" and a "Replacement of number_to_canonical." In other words, the package provides bidirectional conversion between stored canonical number formats and native PL/SQL NUMBER values.

The package is declared with AUTHID CURRENT_USER, meaning that any database object it references is resolved against the privileges of the calling schema rather than the APPS owner. This is a deliberate design choice for a shared utility package that may be invoked from many contexts, including custom code and concurrent programs, without requiring the invoker to hold direct grants on underlying objects. The PRAGMA RESTRICT_REFERENCES declarations on both functions (WNDS, WNPS, RNDS) mark them as pure with respect to database and package state and capable of being called from SQL statements, including within subqueries and function-based indexes.

The package is a low-level primitive rather than a business process component. Its API classification is recorded as OTHER in the ETRM metadata, reflecting that it does not map to a standard Oracle business API pattern. Its importance is better measured by its reach: it is referenced by 279 other packages, making it one of the more widely depended-upon utilities in the Student System schema.

Key Procedures and Functions

The package exposes two documented functions, both directly replacing older canonical conversion routines. Their signatures are shown in the source excerpt, but the parameter and return types are the meaningful documented details:

• TO_NUM — the replacement for canonical_to_number. It accepts a canonical (character/string) representation of a number and returns it as a native PL/SQL NUMBER. Its single parameter is a VARCHAR2 canonical number. This is the routine the user searched for under the term "to_num." It is the function invoked whenever a value stored in canonical string form must be brought into numeric context for arithmetic, comparison, or further processing.
• TO_CANN — the replacement for number_to_canonical. It performs the inverse operation, taking a native PL/SQL NUMBER value and returning the canonical VARCHAR2 representation. Canonical formatting ensures consistent formatting across the application, particularly for identifiers and keys that must be compared or stored as text.

Both functions are declared with RESTRICT_REFERENCES pragmas (WNDS, WNPS, RNDS), confirming that they read no database tables, write no package state, and may therefore be safely used inside SQL statements and PL/SQL expressions wherever a pure function is required.

Tables Accessed

The ETRM metadata lists no tables referenced via APPS synonyms for this package. This is consistent with the nature of the routines: TO_NUM and TO_CANN are pure conversion functions that operate solely on their input parameters and the Oracle built-in conversion facilities. They perform no DML and issue no queries. The absence of table references is therefore not an omission but a confirmed characteristic — the package is side-effect free and depends on no application data.

Usage Notes

Because of its purity and its RESTRICT_REFERENCES declarations, IGS_GE_NUMBER is safe to invoke from SQL, PL/SQL anonymous blocks, forms, and concurrent programs alike. It is most commonly encountered as an internal call inside the 279 packages that reference it, where canonical number conversion is required before arithmetic or key matching. Custom developers working with Student System data should treat TO_NUM and TO_CANN as the supported replacements for the deprecated canonical_to_number and number_to_canonical routines, avoiding direct reliance on the older equivalents. As a general utility, the package carries no user-facing form of its own; it is exercised indirectly throughout the application. When troubleshooting "invalid number" errors in Student System code, TO_NUM is a common point of failure, since it must parse the supplied canonical string successfully before returning a NUMBER.