Browse, search, and get Oracle E-Business Suite metadata

Article
02/02/2021

The metadata that Microsoft BizTalk Adapter for Oracle E-Business Suite surfaces from Oracle E-Business Suite and the underlying Oracle database describes the message structure for communicating with Oracle E-Business Suite using the adapter. The Oracle E-Business adapter supports two interfaces for retrieving metadata.

MetadataExchange provided by Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). WCF provides a metadata-exchange endpoint for all WCF bindings, which enables clients to get metadata from Oracle E-Business Suite.
IMetadataRetrievalContract provided by the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line of Business (LOB) Adapter SDK, which supports the metadata browsing and searching capabilities of the adapter.

The Oracle E-Business adapter surfaces the Oracle E-Business Suite and the underlying database artifacts, and respective operations that the adapter clients can invoke. These operations are discussed later in this topic.

You can use the adapter clients to browse, search, and retrieve metadata by:
Creating a BizTalk project in Visual Studio
Using the WCF channel model
Using the WCF service model

When using a BizTalk project, you must use the Consume Adapter Service BizTalk Project Add-in or the Add Adapter Metadata Wizard to generate metadata for the operations that you want to perform in Oracle E-Business Suite. When using the WCF service model, you must use the Add Adapter Service Reference Visual Studio Plug-in to generate the proxy classes for performing operations in Oracle E-Business Suite. For more information about browsing, searching, and retrieving metadata using Consume Adapter Service Add-in, Add Adapter Metadata Wizard or Add Adapter Service Reference Plug-in, see Get Metadata for Oracle E-Business Suite Operations in Visual Studio.

Browsing metadata

The Oracle E-Business adapter enables adapter clients to browse interface tables, interface views, concurrent programs, and request sets in Oracle E-Business Suite and tables, views, stored procedures, functions, and packages in the underlying database. As part of the metadata browse operation, the adapter also surfaces the operations that can be performed on the Oracle database, including some custom operations supported by the adapters. These operations are available from Consume Adapter Service Add-in, Add Adapter Metadata Wizard, and Add Adapter Service Reference Plug-in.

The Oracle E-Business adapter surfaces most of the operations under the following three nodes:

Application-Based View: Contains the operations grouped by each application for the Oracle E-Business Suite artifacts.
Artifact-Based View: Contains the operations grouped by artifact type (such as Interface Tables, Interface Views, and so on) in Oracle E-Business Suite and the underlying database.
Schema-Based View: Contains the operations grouped by each schema for the underlying database artifacts.

There are some generic operations exposed at the root level that are applicable for both the nodes. Moreover, different operations are surfaced based on the type of operation: outbound or inbound.

The following table lists the outbound and inbound operations surfaced by the Oracle E-Business adapter:

Outbound Operations	Inbound Operations
Application-Based View: Contains a list of Oracle Applications in the underlying Oracle E-Business Suite. Expand an Oracle Application node to see the following artifacts: Interface Tables: A list of all the interface tables. Select an interface table to view the Insert, Select, Update, and Delete operations. Interface Views: A list of all the interface views. Select an interface view to view the Select operation. Concurrent Programs: The following operations for the concurrent programs: A set of all the concurrent programs specific to the Oracle Application that are exposed as operations. The Get_Status operation to get the status of a concurrent program. The Wait_For_Request operation to wait for a request to be completed before returning status. The Submit_Request operation to call or execute a concurrent program by specifying the parameters required for the execution of the concurrent program. Request Sets: A set of all the request sets specific to the Oracle Application that are exposed as operations.	Application-Based View: Contains a list of Oracle Applications in the underlying Oracle E-Business Suite. Expand an Oracle Application node to see the following artifacts: - Interface Tables: The Poll operation for the interface tables that enables adapter clients to obtain inbound data from the Oracle E-Business Suite based on a query polling mechanism supported by the adapter. - Interface Views: The Poll operation for the interface views that enables adapter clients to obtain inbound data from the Oracle E-Business Suite based on a query polling mechanism supported by the adapter.
Artifact-Based View: Contains all the artifacts in Oracle E-Business Suite and the underlying database. Expand an artifact node to see a list of the Oracle Applications or schemas based on the origin of the artifact (applications or database). For example, the Interface Tables node will display a list of Oracle Applications whereas the Tables node will display a list of database schemas. The Artifact-Based View displays the artifacts listed under Applications-Based View and Schema-Based View. Each artifact node lists the operations relevant for an Oracle Application or a database schema.	Artifact-Based View: Except concurrent programs and request sets, contains all the artifacts in Oracle E-Business Suite and all the artifacts in the underlying database. Expand an artifact node to see a list of the Oracle Applications or schemas based on the origin of the artifact (applications or database). For example, the Interface Tables node will display a list of Oracle Applications whereas the Tables node will display a list of database schemas. The Artifact-Based View displays the artifacts listed under Applications-Based View and Schema-Based View. Each artifact node lists the operations relevant for an Oracle Application or a database schema.
Schema-Based View: Contains a list of schemas in the underlying Oracle database. Expand schema node to see the following artifacts: - PL/SQL APIs: A list of all the PL/SQL APIs. Select a PL/SQL API to view the packaged procedures and functions that are exposed as operations. - Procedures: A list of procedures in the schema that are exposed as operations. - Functions: A list of functions in the schema that are exposed as operations. - Tables: A list of all the tables. Select a table to view the Insert, Select, Update, and Delete operations. - Views: A list of all the views. Select a view to view the Select operation.	Schema-Based View: Contains a list of schemas in the underlying Oracle database. Expand schema node to see the following artifacts: - PL/SQL APIs: A list of all the PL/SQL APIs. Select a PL/SQL API to view the packaged procedures and functions that are exposed as operations for polling. - Procedures: A list of procedures in the schema that are exposed as operations for polling. - Functions: A list of functions in the schema that are exposed as operations for polling. - Tables: A list of all the tables. Select a table to view the Poll operation for the table. - Views: A list of all the views. Select a view to view the Poll operation for the view.
The Oracle E-Business adapter also exposes the following generic outbound operations at the root level: ExecuteReader, ExecuteScalar, and ExecuteNonQuery. For information about these operations, see Support for ExecuteNonQuery, ExecuteReader, and ExecuteScalar Operations.	The Oracle E-Business adapter also exposes the Notification operation at the root level that enables adapter clients to receive database change notification messages from Oracle E-Business Suite. For more information about the notification operation, see Considerations for Receiving Database Change Notifications.

For more information about how the metadata is categorized, see Browse, Search, and Retrieve Metadata for Oracle E-Business Operations.

Searching metadata

Using the Oracle E-Business adapter, you can perform a search query in Oracle E-Business Suite and on the underlying Oracle database by using the Oracle search expressions that are compatible with the LIKE operator. For example, adapter clients can use a search expression such as “EMP%” to obtain tables starting with EMP. The adapter converts this to the following SQL query:

SELECT TABLE_NAME FROM ALL_TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME LIKE 'EMP%' AND OWNER = 'SCOTT'

Where, SCOTT is the schema with a collection of Oracle database artifacts.

The following table lists the special characters that can be used for search and their interpretation by the Oracle Database adapter.

Special character	Interpretation
_ (underscore)	Matches exactly one character For example, A_ matches AB, AC, and AD.
% (percentage)	Matches zero or more characters. For example, A% matches A, AB, ABC.
\ (escape)	Escapes the special meaning of % and _. The \ (escape) character is used before a wildcard character to indicate that the wildcard character should be interpreted as a regular character. For example, A\_B matches A_B.

Important

The search string is case-sensitive.
- The search works differently under the different view (Application-Based View, Artifact-Based View, and Schema-Based View). To know how you can search for artifacts and operations under each view, see “Searching Under Different Views” in Search for Oracle E-Business Suite operations.
- To search for an application you can specify the friendly name or the short name of the application. For example, to search for the Receivables application you can specify the search string as either Receive% or AR. AR is the application short name.
- To search for a concurrent program you can specify the friendly name or the actual name of the concurrent program. For example, to search for the Customer Interface concurrent program you can specify the search string as either %Customer Interface% or %RACUST%. RACUST is the actual name of the concurrent program. Also, the search result will always contain the standard concurrent programs irrespective of whether their name matches with the specified search string.

Retrieving metadata

When retrieving metadata, the Oracle E-Business adapter can extract metadata under a schema, including all or a subset of database objects with the respective object and operation parameters. The adapter presents the entities from Oracle E-Business Suite and the underlying Oracle database as element names in XML. Because underscores are the only permissible special characters that can be included, all other special characters in the element names are encoded using underscores. For example, emp$name is encoded as emp_x0024_name. For more information, see Get Metadata for SQL Server operations in Visual Studio using the SQL adapter.

Browse, search, and get Oracle E-Business Suite metadata

Browsing metadata

Searching metadata

Retrieving metadata

See also

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