Simple HTTP Fetches

REQUEST and REQUEST_PIECES take a string universal resource locator (URL), contact that site, and return the data (typically HTML) obtained from that site.

You should not expect REQUEST or REQUEST_PIECES to succeed in contacting a URL unless you can contact that URL by using a browser on the same machine (and with the same privileges, environment variables, etc.)

If REQUEST or REQUEST_PIECES fails (for example, if it raises an exception, or if it returns an HTML-formatted error message, but you believe that the URL argument is correct), then try contacting that same URL with a browser to verify network availability from your machine. You may have a proxy server set in your browser that needs to be set with each REQUEST or REQUEST_PIECES call using the optional proxy parameter.

Note: UTL_HTTP can also use environment variables to specify its proxy behavior. For example, on UNIX, setting the environment variable http_proxy to a URL uses that service as the proxy server for HTTP requests. Setting the environment variable no_proxy to a domain name does not use the HTTP proxy server for URLs in that domain. When the UTL_HTTP package is executed in the Oracle database server, the environment variables are the ones that are set when the database instance is started.