Oracle REST Data Services 3.0.12.263.15.32

Release Notes

Date: September 2017

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Important Changes to Note

Excel worksheet to Application Express Collection upload feature removed

The facility to upload Excel Worksheets to Oracle Application Express collections has been removed. The facility is incompatible with Application Express 5.1. Concerns about the robustness of the library used to parse the Excel worksheets has forced removal of this feature from 3.0.10 and future releases.

APEX_PUBLIC_USER & wwv_flow_epg_include_modules.authorize

In line with security best practice and as recommended by the Oracle Application Express Documentation when a database pool is configured to use the APEX_PUBLIC_USER, Oracle REST Data Services will automatically set the value of the security.requestValidationFunction setting to be: 

    WWV_FLOW_EPG_INCLUDE_MODULES.AUTHORIZE
This activates the white list of callable procedures which ships with Oracle Application Express and prohibits calls to other procedures. Please consult the Oracle Application Express Documentation for more information about this procedure and how to customize it's behaviour.

Extracting ORDS Scripts - Deprecated

The extract ords-scripts command is deprecated. Manual install, upgrade, validate and uninstall using SQL scripts will no longer be supported in ORDS future releases. Refer to Oracle REST Data Services documentation to install, upgrade, validate or uninstall Oracle REST Data Services.

Problems with Oracle Application Express Static Resources

A regression in APEX 5.0.3 and ORDS 3.0.3 prevents the proper functioning of APEX static resources and APEX based RESTful Services. Please upgrade to ORDS 3.0.4 to resolve this issue.

Using ORDS silent installation without specifying tablespaces

If you want to use the database default tablespaces (default and temporary tablespaces) for ORDS_METADATA schema and ORDS_PUBLIC_USER user when installing ORDS from the command line, you must install ORDS in silent (simple) mode and remove the following tablespace entries in your /path/to/params/ords_params.properties file: 

schema.tablespace.default=SYSAUX
schema.tablespace.temp=TEMP
user.tablespace.default=USERS
user.tablespace.temp=TEMP

To install ORDS in silent (simple) mode using the database default tablespaces:

java -jar ords.war
java -jar ords.war install simple

404 Errors when configuring Oracle REST Data Services

There are two main causes of 404 - Not Found errors:

Standalone Mode Document Root

Standalone Mode can now serve aribtrary static resources via it's new document root feature. To see instructions on how to use the document root, use the help command: 

  java -jar ords.war help standalone

  java -jar ords.war standalone [--port] [--apex-images] [--context-path] [--static-context-path] [--doc-root] [--parameterFile]

  Launch Oracle REST Data Services in standalone mode

  Options:
             [--port]              HTTP listen port, default 8080

             [--apex-images]       Path to the folder containing
                                   static resources required by
                                   APEX

             [--context-path]      The context path where Oracle
                                   REST Data Services is
                                   located, defaults to /apex

             [--static-context-path]The Context path where
                                   Application Express static
                                   resources are located,
                                   defaults to /i

             [--doc-root]          Points to the location where
                                   static resources, to be
                                   served under the / root
                                   server path are located.

             [--parameterFile]     Specify the location of the
                                   parameter file to use.
                                   Defaults to
                                   params/ords_params.properties.
For example the following command would configure the document root to be /var/www/html: 
  java -jar ords.war standalone --doc-root /var/www/html
  2015-06-16 22:33:19.899:INFO::main: Logging initialized @1253ms
  Jun 16, 2015 10:33:20 PM oracle.dbtools.standalone.StandaloneJetty setupDocRoot
  INFO: The document root is serving static resources located in: /var/www/html

The document root has the following features:

Changes in 3.0.12

Issues Fixed in 3.0.12

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.11:

New Features since 3.0.11

None

Changes in 3.0.11

Issues Fixed in 3.0.11

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.10:

New Features since 3.0.10

None

Changes in 3.0.10

Issues Fixed in 3.0.10

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.9:

New Features since 3.0.9

Customers can now automatically enable RPC of PL/SQL objects via POST REST endpoints. The PL/SQL API and SQL Developer GUI is similar to what already exists for AUTO REST enabling tables and views. Overloaded package procedures and functions are not supported and attempting to execute them via AUTO PLSQL feature will result in a 404.

Changes in 3.0.9

Issues Fixed in 3.0.9

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.8:

New Features since 3.0.8

None.

Changes in 3.0.8

Issues Fixed in 3.0.8

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.7:

New Features since 3.0.7

None.

Changes in 3.0.7

Issues Fixed in 3.0.7

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.6: The following changes and enhancements have been made to the Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) functionality:

New Features since 3.0.6

Changes in 3.0.6

Issues Fixed in 3.0.6

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.5: The following change and enhancements have been made to the Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) functionality:

New Features since 3.0.5

None

Changes in 3.0.5

Issues Fixed in 3.0.5

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.4:

New Features in 3.0.5

Standalone Mode HTTPS Support

Standalone Mode now supports HTTPS either by generating a self signed certificate or using a provided certificate. HTTPS can be configured using the installer when ORDS starts in standalone mode.

Installer support for Bequeath Connection

Oracle REST Data Services installer supports Bequeath connection for install, upgrade, validate and uninstall. Refer to Oracle REST Data Services documentation for details on using the bequeath connection.

Changes in 3.0.4

Issues Fixed in 3.0.4

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.3:

New Features in 3.0.4

None

Changes in 3.0.3

Issues Fixed in 3.0.3

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.2:

New Features in 3.0.3

Changes in 3.0.2

Issues Fixed in 3.0.2

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.1:

New Features in 3.0.2

Changes in 3.0.1

Issues Fixed in 3.0.1

The following changes and enhancements have been made since 3.0.0:

New Features in 3.0.1

Changes in 3.0.0

The following changes and enhancements have been made since EA1:

Issues Fixed in 3.0.0

New Features in 3.0.0

New Features since 2.0.10

Oracle REST Data Services includes the following new functionality:

Installer

Oracle REST Data Services 2.0.x required Oracle Application Express 4.2 or later to be installed in order to define and use RESTful Services. In Oracle REST Data Services 3.0.x Oracle Application Express is not required. Instead Oracle REST Data Services is able to install it's own schema on the first run of Oracle REST Data Services. The installation process is simple and fast.

Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) for REST

JSON documents can now be stored in and retrieved from document collections managed by Oracle Database. SODA for REST provides an interface to the Oracle Database Document Store for NoSQL style application development.

Auto Generated REST Endpoints for Tables and Views

Using Oracle SQL Developer 4.1 and later you can expose database tables and views as REST API endpoints, enabling data stored in the tables or views to be created, queried, updated and deleted using REST.

Oracle NoSQL Database Support

This release adds support for exposing Oracle NoSQL Database tables as REST API endpoints. The data stored in the tables can be created, queried, updated and deleted using REST.

Changed Behaviour since 2.0.10

The behvaiour of the following existing features has been enhanced:

RESTFul Services

RESTful Service Metadata

Oracle REST Data Services now stores it's metadata about RESTful Services in it's own schema (named: ORDS_METADATA). This means it is no longer required to install Oracle Application Express in order to define RESTful Services.

Since Application Express is not used to define the metadata this means that these RESTful Services cannot be edited by Application Express, instead you must use Oracle SQL Developer 4.1 or later to edit the RESTful Services.

Note that existing RESTful Services defined in Application Express continue to be fully supported, see more about this in the Application Express section below.

Any database schema can be enabled to define RESTful Services, before a schema can define RESTful Services, it must enabled for use with Oracle REST Data Services. This can be done using SQL Developer 4.1 or in SQLPlus by invoking the ords.enable_schema stored procedure:

SQL> connect scott
Enter password:
Connected.
SQL> exec ords.enable_schema;

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL>

Oracle REST API Standardization

New Source Types

Oracle is converging and unifying APIs and document formats across all products that support REST. To support this two new Source Types have been added for Resource Handlers:

'JSON Collection' is the default source type. Note that 'Query', 'JSON Query Feed', and 'Query (with one result only)' continue to be supported, but deprecated and customers are encouraged to switch to using the source types instead.

Pagination

The standardization effort also affects how pagination is performed, previously resources were paginated using the ?page=N query parameter. This syntax conintues to be supported for existing source types, but the new 'JSON Collection' source type uses the standardized ?offset=O&limit=L query parameters. This syntax gives clients more flexibility about indicating the size of pages they can handle.

Security

First Party Authentication

This release introduces support for cookie based first party authentication of RESTful Services. This feature enables web applications deployed on the same web server (origin) as the the RESTful Services to authenticate with the the RESTful Services using a cookie instead of OAuth 2.0 access tokens.

This makes it much easier for first party applications to consume RESTful Services. This feature is supported in ORDS enabled schemas and NoSQL data stores.

User Repositories

Oracle REST Data Services can authenticate against any user repository configured in the host application server. In the previous release users were typically defined in the Application Express user repository, in this release users are typically defined in the application server user respository.

Standalone Mode

Standalone now uses Jetty to provide the JEE runtime environment required by Oracle REST Data Services. Jetty is well proven, mature and being continuously improved.

Oracle Application Express

Oracle REST Data Services continues to support RESTful Services defined in Oracle Application Express. The 'JSON Collection' and 'JSON Item' source types are not supported in RESTful Services defined in Oracle Application Express.

Oracle SQL Developer can be used to edit RESTful Services defined in Application Express or Oracle REST Data Services. A database schema that is associated with an Application Express workspace can be enabled for Oracle REST Data Services 3.0.x RESTful Services, but doing so will mean only the RESTful Services defined in the ORDS_METADATA schema will be editable via Oracle SQL Developer.

Known Issues

JDK Support

SODA

Application Express RESTful Service Migrations

Autogenerated REST Endpoints

RESTful Services

NoSQL