Management Interfaces

Oracle Base Database Cloud@Customer and Oracle Data Infrastructure Cloud@Customer provide a variety of management interfaces to fit your use case and automation needs.

The OCI resources can be created and managed using several interfaces, depending on the operational needs. Available interfaces include:

• Console and supported automation tools
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
• Command-Line Interfaces (CLIs)

These management interfaces fall into two main categories:

• OCI Control Plane Interfaces
• Local Cloud VM CLIs

OCI Control Plane Interfaces

The OCI APIs are standard REST APIs that use HTTPS requests and responses. The Console, an intuitive graphical interface for creating and managing resources, is one of the interfaces to the OCI APIs. When you develop automation that uses the OCI APIs, additional interfaces, including SDKs, tools, and plug-ins, are available to facilitate development and simplify the management of OCI resources. A subset of these APIs applies to the resources and their infrastructure. Each interface provides the same functionality by calling the OCI APIs and enables flexibility and choice based on your preferences and use case.

• Command Line Interface (CLI): The OCI CLI is a small footprint tool that you can use on its own or with the Console to complete Cloud resource and other OCI tasks. The CLI provides the same core functionality as the Console, plus additional commands. Some of these, such as the ability to run scripts, extend the Console’s functionality.
• Software Development Kits (SDK): OCI provides SDKs to enable development of custom solutions for your Cloud resources and applications.
• DevOps Tools and Plug-ins: These tools can simplify provisioning and managing infrastructure, enable automated processes and facilitate development. Tools include the OCI Terraform Provider used with Resource Manager and OCI Ansible Collection.
• Cloud Shell: Cloud Shell is a free-to-use, browser-based terminal, accessible from the Console, that provides access to a Linux shell with pre-authenticated OCI CLI and other useful developer tools. You can use the shell to interact with Cloud and other OCI resources, follow labs and tutorials, and quickly run OCI CLI commands.
• Appendix and Reference: This general reference shows how to configure the SDKs and other developer tools to integrate with OCI services.

• REST APIs: This complete reference provides details on the OCI REST APIs, including descriptions, syntax, endpoints, errors, and signatures.

  For the complete API reference, see:

  • Database Service API Reference
  • Data Infrastructure Cloud@Customer Service API Reference

Local Cloud VM CLIs

In addition to the OCI REST-based APIs, Command Line Interface (CLI) utilities located on the VM guests, provisioned as part of the VM Clusters on the Oracle Base Database Cloud@Customer, are available to perform various lifecycle and administration operations.

The OCI API is the preferred interface. Use the local utilities only when the OCI API is unavailable because the service is in a temporarily disconnected state.

The utilities include:

• dbaascli: Use the dbaascli utility to perform various database lifecycle and administration operations on the service such as:

  • Changing the password of a database user
  • Starting a database
  • Managing Pluggable Databases (PDBs)
  • Scaling the ECPU core count in disconnected mode

• bkup_api: Use the bkup_api utility to perform various backup and recovery operations on the service such as creating an on-demand backup of a complete database or an individual Pluggable Database (PDB), or to customize backup settings used by the automatic backup configuration.

These utilities are provided in addition to, and separate from, the OCI API-based interfaces that are listed here. To use the local VM command-line utilities, you must be connected to a VM in a VM Cluster and use the VM operating system user security, not the OCI user security, for execution. The utilities can be used to perform operations if the service is disconnected from the OCI control plane. Most operations executed by these utilities sync their changes back to the OCI control plane using a process called DB Sync.

The cloud tooling software on the VMs, containing these CLI utilities, is automatically updated by Oracle on a regular basis.