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You can use SQL Developer to create, maintain, and use RESTful services. See the following topics for more information:
Representational State Transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. A service is described as RESTful when it conforms to the tenets of REST. A RESTful service has the following characteristics:
Data is modeled as a set of resources. Resources are identified by URIs
A small, uniform set of operations are used to manipulate resources (for example, GET, POST, PUT, DELETE).
A resource can have multiple representations (for example, a blog might have an HTML representation and a RSS representation).
Services are stateless; and because it is likely that the client will want to access related resources, these should be identified in the representation returned, typically by providing hypertext links.
The following are some major terms related to RESTful services:
RESTful service: An HTTP web service that conforms to the tenets of the RESTful architectural style described in About RESTful Services.
Resource module: An organizational unit that is used to group related resource templates.
Resource template: An individual RESTful service that is able to service requests for some set of URIs (Universal Resource Identifiers). The set of URIs is defined by the URI Pattern of the Resource Template
URI pattern: A pattern for the resource template. Can be either a route pattern or a URI template, although you are encouraged to use route patterns.
Route pattern: A pattern that focuses on decomposing the path portion of a URI into its component parts. For example, a pattern of /objects/:object/:id? will match /objects/emp/101 (matches a request for the item in the emp resource with id of 101) and will also match /objects/emp/ (matches a request for the emp resource, because the :id parameter is annotated with the ? modifier, which indicates that the id parameter is optional).
For a detailed explanation of route patterns, see docs\javadoc\plugin-api\route-patterns.html, under <sqldeveloper-install>\ords and under the location (if any) where you manually installed Oracle REST Data Services.
URI template: A simple grammar that defines the specific patterns of URIs that a given resource template can handle. For example, the pattern employees/{id} will match any URI whose path begins with employees/, such as employees/2560.
Resource handler: Provides the logic required to service a specific HTTP method for a specific resource template. For example, the logic of the GET HTTP method for the preceding resource template might be:
select empno, ename, dept from emp where empno = :id
HTTP operation: HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol) defines standard methods that can be performed on resources: GET (retrieve the resource contents), POST (store a new resource), PUT (update an existing resource), and DELETE (remove a resource).
For you to use the RESTful Services features in SQL Developer, Oracle REST Data Services 3.0 must be installed and running.
You can use the Oracle REST Data Services Install wizard to install and run Oracle REST Data Services in standalone mode. See the information for the Install/Run Oracle REST Data Services wizard.
You can run the Oracle REST Data Services installer from the command line. For information about using the command-line interface, see Oracle REST Data Services Installation, Configuration, and Development Guide.
Note the following about Oracle REST Data Services RESTful services and Oracle Application Express RESTful services:
To use Oracle REST Data Services RESTful services, you will need to enable a schema for RESTful services. See the RESTful Services Wizard (Auto-Enable REST Access) Specify Details page for how to enable a schema for RESTful Services.
When you create a connection, specify the schema alias in the Schema/Workspace field. The schema alias is the Schema Alias name that you provided when you enabled a schema for RESTful Services. For information on setting up the connection, see RESTful Services Connection.
To use Oracle Application Express RESTful services, see Oracle Application Express Administration Guide for details to set up Application RESTful services.
The REST Development pane (click View, then RESTful Services, then Development) enables you to:
Specify connection information for your RESTful services
Retrieve all RESTful services (includes all resource modules and privileges), or retrieve a selected resource module or privilege
Create, edit, and delete resource modules, resource templates, resource handlers, and privileges
Upload a resource module or privilege and have the results saved on the server
Open a .zip file that contain the RESTful services definitions
Save the RESTful services definitions to a .zip file
The RESTful Services pane has icons for the following operations:
New RESTful Services: Creates a new RESTful Services administration that can contain the resource modules and privileges.
Retrieve RESTful Services: Downloads the resource modules and privileges. (Enabled if you are connected to a RESTful Services connection.)
Validate RESTful Services: Performs validation of all the resource modules' templates and handlers; displays any warning and error messages. (Enabled if the navigator tree contains at least one module or one privilege.)
Connect: Lets you select a RESTful Services connection or to create a new RESTful Services connection.
You can right-click on the RESTful Services node to perform the operations with associated icons, plus the following operations:
Connect: Connects to the enabled RESTful Services schema or Application Express workspace based on the user's credentials. See RESTful Services Connection to set up the connection.
Disconnect: Disconnects from the user's schema or workspace.
New RESTful Services: Creates a new RESTful Services administration which contains the resource modules and privileges.
Retrieve RESTful Services: Downloads the resource modules and privileges from the user's schema or workspace. (Enabled if you are connected to a RESTful Services connection.)
Open File: Opens a .zip file that contains the resource modules and privileges, and loads them into RESTful Services Administration.
Save As: Creates a .zip file that contains the resource modules and privileges. (Enabled if the navigator tree contains at least one module or one privilege.)