Why is datetime.strptime not working in this simple example?

Because datetime is the module. The class is datetime.datetime.

import datetime
dtDate = datetime.datetime.strptime(sDate,"%m/%d/%Y")

You should be using datetime.datetime.strptime. Note that very old versions of Python (2.4 and older) don't have datetime.datetime.strptime; use time.strptime in that case.

You are importing the module datetime, which doesn't have a strptime function.

That module does have a datetime object with that method though:

import datetime
dtDate = datetime.datetime.strptime(sDate, "%m/%d/%Y")

Alternatively you can import the datetime object from the module:

from datetime import datetime
dtDate = datetime.strptime(sDate, "%m/%d/%Y")

Note that the strptime method was added in python 2.5; if you are using an older version use the following code instead:

import datetime, time
dtDate = datetime.datetime(*time.strptime(sDate, "%m/%d/%Y")[:6])

You should use strftime static method from datetime class from datetime module. Try:

import datetime
dtDate = datetime.datetime.strptime("07/27/2012", "%m/%d/%Y")