Work with Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) in Autonomous Database

Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) is a set of NoSQL-style APIs that let you use collections of JSON documents in Autonomous Database, retrieve them, and query them, without needing to know Structured Query Language (SQL) or how the documents are stored in the database.

Autonomous Database supports storing and querying JSON documents natively. SODA document collections are backed by ordinary database tables and views; you can take advantage of database features for use with the content of SODA documents.

SODA drivers are available for several languages and frameworks including: Java, Node.js, Python, C (using Oracle Call Interface), and PL/SQL, and SODA for REST. SODA for REST maps SODA operations to Uniform Resource Locator (URL) patterns, so it can be used with most programming languages.

To get started with SODA, see the following:

• Overview of SODA

Depending on the SODA API you want to work with, see the following:

Note:

If you are using Always Free Autonomous Database with Oracle Database 21c, then to avoid compatibility problems of SODA drivers, Oracle recommends the following:

• Use the driver versions that are needed for working with JSON type as specified in SODA Drivers. See SODA Drivers for more information.

• For projects that were started using a database release prior to Oracle Database 21c, explicitly specify the metadata for the default collection as specified in the example in SODA Drivers. For projects started using release Oracle Database 21c or later, just use the default metadata. See SODA Drivers for more information.

SODA API	Download and Installation	More Information
SODA for Java	Download SODA for Java SODA for Java Prerequisites Versions: SODA for Java, using the latest version is recommended. The minimum supported version is: 1.1.4. Use SODA for Java in conjunction with ojdbc8.jar for 19.6 (available at Oracle Database 19c (19.6) JDBC Driver & UCP Downloads, or on Maven Central). Autonomous Database does not support Metadata builder. To customize collection metadata pass collection metadata strings directly to the createCollection method. See SODA Collection Metadata on Autonomous Database for more information.	SODA for Java
SODA for REST	Access RESTful Services and SODA for REST	Use SODA for REST with Autonomous Database
SODA for C	Oracle Instant Client Downloads Versions: For SODA for C, Oracle Client libraries must be 19.6 and above. You can obtain Oracle Instant Client from Oracle Instant Client Downloads.	SODA for C
SODA for PL/SQL	No need to download. This is included with Autonomous Database.	SODA for PL/SQL
SODA for Node.js	Multiple downloads described in install instructions: Quick Start node-oracledb Installation Versions: SODA support was introduced in version 3.0. Using the latest version is recommended, the minimum recommended version is 4.0. Oracle Client libraries must be 19.6 and above. You can obtain Oracle Instant Client from Oracle Instant Client Downloads.	Node-oracledb SODA Requirements
SODA for Python	Multiple downloads described in install instructions: cx_Oracle 7 Installation Versions: SODA support was introduced in version 7.0. Using the latest version is recommended, the minimum recommended version is 7.1. Oracle Client libraries must be 19.6 and above. You can obtain Oracle Instant Client from Oracle Instant Client Downloads.	Introduction to cx_Oracle

• SODA Notes
  When you use SODA with Autonomous Database the following restrictions apply:

SODA Notes

When you use SODA with Autonomous Database the following restrictions apply:

• Automatic indexing is not supported for SQL and PL/SQL code that uses the SQL/JSON function json_exists. See SQL/JSON Condition JSON_EXISTS for more information.

• Automatic indexing is not supported for SODA query-by-example (QBE).