Working Effectively with

Oracle’s Public APIs

Finding, Understanding, Using, Tuning, and Extending

Presented by Rob Lepanto, API Wizard

About the Presenter, Rob Lepanto
• 17 years working with Oracle Apps/EBS
• Project manager and techno-functional consultant
• President of the NYC-OAUG (geo group)
• API Guru at API Wizard
• www.linkedin.com/in/RobLepanto
Presentation Overview
• What’s an API and how are they used
• How to identify available APIs
• Working with APIs
• When APIs fail
• Improving API performance
• Extensions and private APIs
Presentation Goal
• By the end of this presentation, you should have a better
understanding of how you can find and use public APIs to
improve business processing at your organization
What’s an API?
• API stands for 'Application Programming Interface'
• A software program which serves as an intermediary or
interface between two other software programs or between a
software program and data
• APIs are used in a very wide array of contexts with today’s
technology and often mean slightly different things in each.
Oracle EBS: Public API vs Private API
• Public APIs have been created by Oracle for customer use.
• Supported / safe
• Documented
• Relatively simple to use

• Private/internal APIs are created by Oracle for its internal

processing
• Not supported
• Use at your own risk
How are public APIs used?
Usage Example
Interface two systems Synch customers with third-party application
such as salesforce.com
Custom applications A custom set of forms to more easily manage
service contracts.
Load or update bulk data Update inventory items across dozens of orgs
API Wizard To streamline data entry
Why is it important to use Public APIs?
Along with open interfaces, public APIs represent the only safe,
supported way to enter data in Oracle EBS aside from Oracle
forms.

"(Public) APIs are guaranteed to maintain the integrity of the

database… Invalid data cannot be entered into the system and
existing data is protected from incorrect alterations."

Oracle Implementation Guide

 Great mysteries
The Voynich Manuscript
The Beale Ciphers
Who built Stonehenge and why?
Where do I find a list of Public APIs?

• No single, complete source of API information

• You have to employ a variety of approaches to find the public APIs
that you are looking for
• Hard to find but there are a lot of them:
• Over 1,500 in R11, over 2,500 in R12
• Some processes have both public APIs and Open Interfaces
• Some processes have one or the other
• A few processes have neither
How to find Public APIs?
Place to look Description
Oracle Integration Either online at irep.oracle.com or using
Repository Integration Repository Responsibility (R12
only)
Oracle Documentation docs.oracle.com
Web Search Search terms:
Oracle API and what you’re looking for. For
example, 'Oracle API Receipts'
My Oracle Support Knowledge Base, Forum, raise an SR
Your services provider Should have knowledge or way to get
information
API Wizard Has a knowledge base which it shares
Query DBA Objects A powerful do-it-yourself option, described
in detail on next slide.
Querying DBA Objects
Use standard naming conventions and some ingenuity to find public APIs

SELECT distinct object_name pkg, procedure$ proc

FROM dba_objects obj, sys.argument$ args
WHERE obj.object_id = args.obj#
AND obj.object_type = 'PACKAGE'
AND obj.owner = 'APPS'
AND ( obj.object_name LIKE '%API%'
OR obj.object_name LIKE '%PUB%'
) name, generally somewhat
AND args.procedure$ LIKE '%ITEM%'
AND args.argument LIKE '%LEAD_TIME_LOT_SIZE%'
ORDER BY object_name, procedure$
The public APIs generally have
the term 'API' or 'PUB' in them,
so this is a good way to narrow
down your search
This is part of the procedure
descriptive to the task at hand. In
this case, I want to update item
info, so I’ll use 'ITEM' in my
search to reduce the resultset

Results: This is the name of a parameter

in the API. You’re probably
guessing here but oftentimes API
parameters are similar to the
name of the field in the table
where the data is stored. You can
also look in the forms using
Help > Examine
De-Facto Public API Standards
Standard Description

Package.procedure Most public APIs are package.procedures (rather than stand-alone

procedures). There are some package.functions.
Standard input These input parameters are included in the majority of public APIs:
parameters p_api_version
p_init_msg_list
p_commit
Standard output These output parameters are included in the majority of public APIs:
parameters
p_return_status / x_return_status
p_msg_count / x_msg_count
p_msg_data / x_msg_data
Initializations User, Responsibility, Application, Organization,
MO_Global
Flexfield Support Ability to process flexfields

Internal identifiers Internal Oracle IDs rather than common values (i.e. party_id rather than
party_name)
Owned by 'apps' Unlike other objects like tables, which are owned by individual module
schemas, all of the APIs are owned by the 'apps' schema
No quite standards but fairly common
Standard Description

p_object_version_ Required by several public APIs. For example, required when updating
number parties/customers and employees.
No status Some public APIs don’t provide a status parameter, so how do you know if
parameter they were processed successfully?
No messages They write out to fnd_msg or another utility rather than have an output
parameter messages parameter
Special messages User, Responsibility, Application, Organization,
MO_Global
Error message handling
• Messages
• Number of messages controls how you retrieve them for most
APIs. As a general rule, most APIs have a p_msg_count or
x_msg_count parameter that gives you the message count
• Single message
• Generally go to output parameter p_msg_data (or x_msg_data)
• Multiple messages
• Generally written to fnd message buffer,
• Must retrieve with fnd_msg_pub.get
Public API Failures
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Edison
Types of API Failures
Failure Type Description
Failure to make API not executed because
valid API Call call is invalid, typical error
is:
ORA-0650 Wrong number
of types of arguments
Validation failure Data does not pass
validation and does not
create or update data
How to address
1. Check data-types of values passed and data-
types of parameters.
2. If that’s not it, then look at documentation or
look at the API code (TOAD and SQL*Developer
make this easy) to find required parameters
(those that do not have default values).
1. Check the error messages, some are fairly
explicit.
2. If error message is not meaningful, try to
eliminate non-required parameters and then
add back one at a time until error occurs.
3. Check the documentation
4. Search
5. Raise an SR
Public API Performance
"Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!'
Then get busy and find out how to do it."
- Theodore Roosevelt
• You can’t improve API performance… can you?
• Performance techniques
• Traces and indexes • Use internal IDs
• Parallel execution • Pre-validate
• Coordinating activity • Pinning
• Data preparation • Patches
• Commit frequency
Extending functionality with Wrappers
• Wrappers
• Program which provides a programming shell within
which one or more APIs, validations, and output
translations can occur.
• Why use wrappers?
• Often takes multiple APIs to complete a business
process
• Allows addition of logic, validations, and workflows
• Requires programming effort but process efficiency
usually makes it a good investment
Private APIs
"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing."
-Warren Buffett

When do private APIs come into play?

• When there are business process you need to perform outside of the forms
and there’s no public API… but you’ve found a private API. Should you use
it? What are the risks?
• Risks
• Use of private APIs is not supported by Oracle
• May not work as you expect
• Benefits
• Significantly better than direct table writes
• Not really that difficult to fully vet and test

• Do Oracle customers use private APIs?

• Yes. In my experience working with many (50+) organizations that make use of
public APIs, approximately half also use private APIs.
Conclusion
• Oracle has invested heavily in exposing APIs to its customers,
which is evident by the big increase in public APIs between
R11 (1,500) and R12 (2,500)
• Public APIs provide a safe and effective way to perform Oracle
EBS transactions much faster and more efficiently than
standard forms or custom programs
• While it isn’t always easy to find them, there are public APIs
for nearly every business process. With some ingenuity and
elbow grease you can find them and learn how to use them
• You can put them in wrappers for a more complete business
process and you can improve their performance when needed
• This is the 'right' (i.e. safe and supported) way to work with
your Oracle EBS data
For more information
• To see white paper that was the source of data for this
presentation, please go to:

www.api-wizard.com/oaug_api_paper.html

• To email Rob Lepanto