1. Using Guide for Oracle Cloud
  2. About Oracle Database Actions

1 About Oracle Database Actions

Oracle Database Actions is a web-based interface that uses Oracle REST Data Services to provide development, data studio, administration and monitoring features for Oracle Autonomous Database.

The main features include executing your SQL statements and scripts, creating Data Modeler diagrams, developing RESTful web services, managing JSON collections, and using the Data Load, Catalog, Data Insights, Business Models, and Data Transforms tools to load data from local and remote sources, view data in your tables and views, view objects in your data dictionary, and organize, analyze, and transform your data.

Note:

Some features are only available if you sign in as a user with database administration rights. For such features, a "restricted availability" statement appears at the start of the feature description. For example:

Available only if you signed in as a database user with administrator rights.

Database Actions is also available for download and deployment in your own on-premises Oracle Database or in customer-managed Oracle Database cloud services. For more information, see Oracle Database Actions for On-Premises Oracle Database.

See Also:

About the Database Actions User Interface

This section describes the Database Actions user interface.

The Database Actions user interface has three components:

  • The Header at the top

  • The page body, whose content varies depending on which page you are viewing

  • The Status Bar at the bottom

Header

The header contains the Selector icon, a Search field, the help icon, and the user drop-down list.


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Description of the illustration header2.png

  • Selector Icon

    Click the Selector iconSelectorto see the main navigation menu slide into view. Click Oracle Database Actions in the header to go to the Launchpad page.

  • Search field

    To enter a search term, click in the Search field or use the shortcut key Ctrl+K (Command+K for Apple computers). For more information, see Using the Omnisearch Bar.

  • Help Icon

    Click the help icon to open the contextual or online help for the page you are viewing.

  • User Drop-Down List

    The user drop-down list shows the database user you are signed in as, and provides the following items when you open it:

    • Preferences

      The options are:

      Region

      • Language: Select one of the following languages for the user interface: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Chinese
      • Timezone: Select UTC or Local time zone from the drop-down list.

      Code Editor

      Provides global settings that apply to the code editor, such as theme, indentation, font family and line numbers.

      Worksheet

      • SQL History: Controls whether the history of commands executed in the code editor is enabled in the browser or not.

    • Log: Opens a dialog that shows the list of HTTP calls made during your session.

    • About: Opens a dialog providing version information for the database and other components as well as copyright and licensing information.

    • Sign Out: Signs you out of your database session.

Status Bar

The status bar contains icons that link to log files. The three icons (Errors, Warnings, Processes) are filters that have been applied to the log file.

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Errors, Warnings: Displays an Errors or Warnings dialog, which lists log entries from unsuccessful REST calls or from any other problem in the application.

Processes: Displays a Processes dialog, which logs REST calls that are either finished or ongoing.

Log notification link: Displays a Log dialog, containing log entries of the following types: Errors, Warnings, Processes, SQL History and SQL Result.

Using the Omnisearch Bar

You can access the Omnisearch bar (Search field) in the header from any page in Database Actions.

To enter a search term, click in the search field located at the top right of the header, or use the shortcut key Ctrl+K (Command+K for Mac OS systems).

In the Omnisearch bar, you can filter the search entry by selecting a category (such as tables, views, templates, and so on) from the displayed list.

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Description of the illustration search_field.png

If you do select a category, you will then need to enter the exact search term.

If you do not select a category, ALL is selected by default. After you enter the search term, a search is performed across all categories. In some cases, the search term is searched across multiple attributes of a category. The following table lists the attributes that are searched for each category:

Category Attribute

Tables

Name

Views

Name

Indexes

Name

Packages

Name

Functions

Name

Procedures

Name

Triggers

Name

Types

Name

Sequences

Name

Charts

Name, Comments, URI_Prefix

Dashboards

Name, Comments, URI_Prefix

Modules

Name, Comments, URI_Prefix

Templates

Comments, URI_Prefix

Handlers

Comments

Roles

Name

Privileges

Label, Name, Comments, Description

OAuth Clients

Name, Description

Database Users

Username, Alias (alias is used depending on user permissions)

APEX Workspaces

Workspace, Workspace display name

Displaying Results for the Search Term

In the results displayed, categories are sorted based on the following criteria:

  1. Number of exact matches
  2. Most number of matched items

The results within a category are displayed as two groups. The first group consists of items that exactly match the search term. The second group consists of items that contain the search term but do not start with it. Within each group, the items are sorted alphabetically.

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Description of the illustration search_best_match.png

You can quickly access previous search terms using the Recent Searches list.

Accessing Database Actions

Database Actions runs in Oracle REST Data Services and access to it is provided through schema-based authentication. To access Database Actions, you must sign in as a database user whose schema has been enabled for Database Actions.

In Oracle Autonomous Database databases, the ADMIN user is pre-enabled. To enable another database user's schema, see Enabling User Access to Database Actions.

Enabling User Access to Database Actions

To enable a database user to access Database Actions, run the following code as the ADMIN user: 

BEGIN
 ords_admin.enable_schema(
  p_enabled => TRUE,
  p_schema => 'schema-name',
  p_url_mapping_type => 'BASE_PATH',
  p_url_mapping_pattern => 'schema-alias',
  p_auto_rest_auth => NULL
 );
 commit;
END;

where:

  • schema-name is the database schema name in all-uppercase.
  • schema-alias is an alias for the schema name that will appear in the URL the user will use to access Database Actions. Oracle recommends that you do not use the schema name itself as a security measure to keep the schema name from being exposed.

After enabling user access, in the Autonomous Database Details page, click Database Actions. The Database Actions Launchpad page appears.

The Home Page - Launchpad

The Launchpad page for Database Actions can now dynamically display categories and features based on whether you are logged in to an on-premises, Autonomous Database or OCI environment. For on-premises, the main categories displayed are Pinned and Recently Visited, Development, Administration and Monitoring. For Autonomous Database, additional categories displayed are Data Studio and Downloads. Descriptions for features belonging to these categories are provided below.

The first time you log in, the Development tab is displayed by default. All features that pertain to the Development category are displayed vertically on the left side of the screen. When you hover over a feature name, its description is displayed on the right along with links to specific documentation pages. A new feature is highlighted with a blue label.

In Pinned & Recently Visited, Pinned lists all features that you have pinned (saved). To pin a feature, click the Pin icon displayed on the top right of the feature description. There is no limit on the number of features that can be pinned. Recently Visited lists the last seven features that you have accessed.

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Description of the illustration launchpad-adb.png

To navigate to a specific feature such as the REST pages, click REST on the left or click Open in the feature description part.

The following is a description of each feature displayed on the home page.

Development

Administration

Administration is available only if you are signed in as a database user with administrator rights.

Monitoring

Monitoring is available only if you are signed in as a database user with administrator rights.

Downloads

Related Services

  • RESTful Services and SODA: Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) provides HTTPS interfaces for working with the contents of your Oracle Database in one or more REST enabled schemas.. See Developing RESTful Services in Autonomous Database

  • Oracle Machine Learning RESTful Services: Oracle Machine Learning provides REST APIs for OML4Py Embedded Python Execution and OML Services.

  • Oracle Database API for MongoDB: Oracle Database API for MongoDB enables Mongo-DB compatible clients and drivers to connect directly to Autonomous Database. See Using Oracle Database API for MongoDB

About Session State in Database Actions

In Database Actions, a connection to the database is stateless.

In a stateless environment, each HTTPS request from a client maps to a new database session. Therefore, a session begins and ends with every SQL statement or script execution.

As the session state is not maintained, session attributes do not persist and commands such as ROLLBACK and COMMIT do not apply. If a SQL statement or script executes successfully, an implicit commit is performed. If it executes with an error, an implicit rollback is performed.

Therefore, when needed, include the ROLLBACK and COMMIT commands or session attributes in the PL/SQL code block that is sent to the database for a session.

The only configuration commands that persist during a session in Database Actions are:

  • SET DEF[INE] <ON|OFF|prefix_character>
  • SET ESC[APE] <ON|OFF|escape_character>
  • SET TIMI[NG] <ON|OFF>

Enabling Detailed Request Error Messages for a Specific Schema

For development or debugging purposes, you can enable detailed request error messages to appear for a specific schema in an Autonomous Database.

To set this up, run the following code block:

Note:

You need the ORDS_ADMINISTRATOR_ROLE to run this code block. 
begin
ords_admin.set_property(
   p_schema => 'HR',
   p_key => 'debug.printDebugToScreen',
   p_value  => 'true'
);
end;
/

Subsequently, any user request that produces an error response will include a detailed message, including a stack trace.

After debugging, turn the schema-level configuation off by setting the parameter to false.

Note:

This setting must not be enabled on productions systems due to the risk of sensitive information being revealed to an attacker.