About the API Help

This information in this Repository and Model Reference Guide is for application developers who design or implement code to access information held in Oracle Repository via its Application Programming Interface (API). The guide provides mainly formal reference information about the methods provided by the various packages and Java classes that make up the API. It does not cover the detailed procedures required to build applications and tools that use the API.

It is assumed that readers are familiar with:

• The programming languages and platforms they intend to use to submit calls to the API.
  
  
• Oracle Repository concepts in general.
  
  
• The particular aspects of Oracle Repository that are to be accessed via the API.

In this release, the scope of the Repository API has been greatly extended to cover functionality and new concepts introduced in in addition to those provided by the CDAPI.

The major areas covered by this documentation are shown on the index page and in the package summary. This edition of the API guide covers the following areas newly introduced in Oracle Repository 6i, in addition to those areas covered in previous releases.

• Fine-grained versioning. In previous releases, the way to maintain versions of objects was to maintain different versions of the application system that contained them. Users can now maintain any number of object versions of an individual object. Users now work with versions of objects: checking objects out, updating them, checking them in (thus creating new versions), creating and merging development branches.
  
  
• The workarea is the primary method for establishing the scope of visibility for a user working in the repository. In previous releases, the application system was the method used for maintaining different versions of objects and for defining the scope of visibility of objects. This method of determining scope of visibility has been replaced by the workarea: a named specific set of object versions whose contents are determined by rules applied when the workarea is compiled. This release also introduces configurations as a method of grouping a specific version of specific objects. A configuration is a set of specific object versions, where only one version of an object is visible in the configuration. Configurations can be used to specify the content of a workarea.
  
  
• The container, a type of object that can contain other objects in a hierarchy much like an operating system path. For example, an application system is a container that can contain other objects, including other containers.
  
  
• Context. Callers must work with a view of the repository that requires:
  • A context workarea
  • A context container

  to be set, in order to target specific object versions.

• Numerical identifiers and repository path. A major change for the API user is that as a result of versioning and of the hierarchical structuring of the repository into containers and sub containers, the name property is not always sufficient to uniquely identify an object or object version. Objects and object versions are identified uniquely either by a unique numerical identifier or by a unique repository path (the set of owning containers of an object). The API provides a naming service API that can translate between a a repository path and its identifier, and vice versa.
  
  
• Enhancements to the CDAPI to provide additional functions such moving, sharing, and copying objects between containers.
  
  
• Oracle schema registration. In addition to the existing user extensibility facility, users can register their own element types, based on Oracle database schema objects (tables), to create new user-defined element types that behave similarly to the supplied (configured) element types.
  
  
• File upload, download, and synchronization. This release introduces facilities for Java clients to transparently keep operating system files mirrored in the repository, via upload and download operations.
  
  
• A compare and merge framework that enables Java clients compare and optionally merge repository objects.
  
  
• Extensive enhancements to the arrangements for system privileges and access rights that determine what a user can do in the repository and what actions a user can perform on the contents of a specific container, workarea, or configuration

Further details of these aspects of the Oracle Repository can be found in the Oracle Repository Online Help.

A Methods List provides a categorized listing of all the packages, classes, and methods in the Repository API. For each method, there is a link to its description within the help system.

This edition of the API Help introduces more wide-ranging information about element type specifications, information extracted directly from the Oracle Repository Model. Links are provided (labeled Element Type Definitions) to information about each element type supported by Oracle Repository. This information includes details of the constraints and conditions defined against an element type, via a set of API specifications that set out details of how the element type may and may not be programmatically manipulated. Not all element types are governed by such constraints, and the constraints are very particular to each element type, so it is worth becoming familiar with the constraints for an element type before attempting to manipulate it programmatically. To access the API Spec information, use the 'API Spec' link on each appropriate Element Type Definition page.

This help system also provides access to background information about Oracle Repository concepts, which should be by readers who are not familiar with all basic aspects of Oracle Repository. The Oracle Online Help system provides detailed guide for using the tools supplied with Oracle Repository.