REST Services Now Available for Oracle Autonomous Database

Oracle blogs: Jeff Smith

The Autonomous Database is offered via two services in our Oracle Cloud, Autonomous Data Warehouse and Autonomous Transaction Processing. 

Both use machine learning and automation to eliminate complexity, human error, and manual management, helping to ensure higher reliability, security, and more operational efficiency. 

As of today, you can now develop and deploy RESTful Services for your Autonomous Database with native Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) support. 

What is ORDS? 

This video is a comprehensive overview of REST and how ORDS provides what you need to deliver RESTful Services for your Oracle Database: 

You can find more information about ORDS on our product page:

https://www.oracle.com/rest

Developing RESTful Services in Autonomous Database 

You have several development interfaces available, including: 

• SQL Developer (desktop) 
• APEX 
• PL/SQL API 

From SQL Developer on your desktop, you can connect to your Autonomous Database and REST enable tables and views and/or develop custom RESTful Services based on your SQL and PL/SQL code. 

In this very basic example, I have Auto REST enabled a table, EMP, with the following code block, executed directly from my SQL Developer Web worksheet: 

BEGIN ORDS.ENABLE_OBJECT(p_enabled => TRUE, p_schema => 'ADMIN', p_object => 'EMP', p_object_type => 'TABLE', p_object_alias => 'people' ); COMMIT; END; / 

The ORDS PL/SQL API can be accessed via the ORDS and ORDS_ADMIN packages. 

Now to access the TABLE, I can do a GET, POST, PUT, or DELETE on /ords/admin/people/, in this case doing a GET on /ords/admin/people/ will return the first page of records in the table. 

My table in SQL Developer, REST enabled, and then doing a GET on the resource to query the data. 

Note that the table is secured with my database credentials, using the schema that I have defined the service in, and have also REST enabled. Only the ‘ADMIN’ schema is REST enabled by default, and this is done for access to SQL Developer Web. We recommend you create a new schema to house your applications in, much like you would not use the SYS or SYSTEM schema for doing your application work in. 

Alternatively, now that the Autonomous Database also includes native APEX support, you can use the RESTful Services development pages in APEX to build and maintain your services and REST enabled objects. 

Use the SQL Workshop in APEX to access your Oracle RESTful Services and REST Enabled objects. 

APEX Docs

Want to Learn More About ORDS and RESTFul Services for Oracle Database? 

In addition to the resources on oracle.com/rest and youtube.com I previously shared, I’ve also put together this Resource Page to help you get started with frequently asked questions and tasks you might be curious about. 

That's a picture with links, click the picture to get to the page.