1 Overview

This chapter gives an overview of Oracle Discussions Software Development Kit (SDK) and Oracle Discussions Web Services.

• Oracle Discussions Software Development Kit

• Oracle Discussions Web Services

Oracle Discussions Software Development Kit

Oracle Discussions SDK consists of the following components:

• Category and Forum Management Application Programming Interface (API): Developers can use this API to create or delete categories and forums, edit the properties of existing categories and forums, and set the access control lists on these categories and forums.

• Topic Management API: Developers can use this API to post new topics, read messages in a topic and move or delete.

• Message Management API: Developers can use this API to post new messages and edit or hide or delete the messages in a topic.

• Favorites and Subscriptions API: Developers can use this API to manage favorites and subscriptions to categories, forums and topics.

• Other Oracle Discussions internal classes

Oracle Discussions Web Services

The Oracle Discussions Web Services layer is on the top of the Oracle Discussions SDK layer. The methods in the Web Service class are actually operations or services that are supported by Oracle Discussions SDK. These methods are categorized into ten service classes as follows:

• Authentication Service

  This service provides methods for the user login and logout operations. It has to be invoked before the user performs the first operation on the Web Services and after the user finishes using the Oracle Discussions Web Services.

• Container Service

  This service provides operations that are common to both Category and Forum Services. Container Service is a logical parent service to both Category and Forum Services.

• Category Service

  A category is an abstraction of a container that holds other categories and forums. A category cannot contain messages directly under it. The Category Service provides methods for operations on Oracle Discussions Category. This service also provides methods for bulk-create and bulk-delete operations to operate on multiple categories in one invocation.

• Forum Service

  A forum in Oracle Discussions represents a container, to which topics or messages are posted. The Forum Service service provides methods for operations on Oracle Discussions Forum. In addition, it provides methods for bulk-create and bulk-delete operations to operate on multiple forums in one invocation.

• Topic Service

  A topic is the subject around which a group of messages are centred. It is the original message that starts the thread for other messages. The Topic Service provides methods for operations on Oracle Discussions Topic. This service also provides methods for bulk-create and bulk-delete operations to operate on multiple topics in one invocation.

• Message Service

  The replies to a topic are called messages. A message can have attachments and text. The Message Service provides methods that operate on these messages. This service also provides methods for bulk-create and bulk-delete operations to operate on multiple messages in one invocation. In addition, it also provides operations for retrieving messages from byte arrays, creating messages and editing them.

• MyDiscussions Service

  This service provides methods that operate on the following:

  • Favorites

  • My Posts

  • Replies to my posts

  • Popular topics

  • Recent posts

  Favorites show the Oracle Discussions elements such as categories, forums and messages that the user has bookmarked.

• Subscription Service

  This service provides methods to subscribe and unsubscribe to a container and a topic. It also provides methods to update, list and retrieve subscriptions.

• User Service

  This service provides methods to retrieve users of Oracle Discussions based on the user attributes.

• S2S Authentication Service

  This service facilitates other services to proxy authenticate an user to Oracle Discussions by authentic ating themselves with Oracle Discussions. The service proxy, that authenticates the user, should provide the login id of the user when asserting its own credentials to Oracle Discussions..