Thoth Gateway version 1.3.7 available, including source code

There is a new version of the Thoth Gateway, a mod_plsql replacement for IIS, available for download. The latest version is 1.3.7.

This version also includes the source code for the gateway. The project has been "open source" (under a BSD license) since day 1, but I never got around to actually publishing the source code, until now that is! :-)

This version fixes an issue with page rendering that was only impacting Apex 4.2 installations. Thanks to Patrick and Christian on the Apex developer team who responded quickly to my inquiries about the underlying changes in Apex that caused this problem to appear (the problem was caused by improper CGI setup in IIS/Thoth, not a problem with Apex itself).

Note also that this version removes support for OWA basic authentication (see the release notes in the downloaded archive for details). This should not have any impact on Apex applications at all (but may impact older, "pure OWA" applications).

Upgrades: For existing installations, simply overwrite the existing PLSQLGatewayModule.dll file in the "bin" folder with the latest version from the downloaded archive.

Roadmap for the Thoth Gateway

The goal for the next release of the gateway (tentatively called version 1.4.0) is to change the Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) from the "Unmanaged" to the "Managed" driver. By using the Managed (pure .NET) driver, the installation of the Thoth Gateway becomes even simpler, because it removes the need to have the full Oracle client (or even the Instant Client) on the system. Note that this will change the minimum system requirements from .NET Framework 3.5 to 4.0 (the version that the managed driver requires).

For Thoth Gateway version 2.0, it might be fun to implement RESTful Web Services, to catch up feature-wise with the Apex Listener. (The Thoth Gateway already has automatic SOAP Web Services built-in, though.) By the way, now that the source code is available, anyone can pick up the challenge and contribute new features to the gateway!

Apex Listener Resource Templates

An early adopter version 1.1 of the Apex Listener was released a while back.

Along with the software download there is a developer's guide that describes a new feature of the listener, called Resource Templates. From the guide:

Oracle Application Express Listener enables data stored in an Oracle Database to be exposed via RESTful Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

The guide continues:

RESTful APIs are created by configuring 'Resource Templates'. A Resource Template is a configuration file that binds a set of URIs to a SQL query or anonymous PL/SQL block. The set of URIs is identified by a 'URI Template', a simple syntax for describing URIs e.g. people/{userid}. The URI Template may contain zero or more parameters ( e.g. {userid}) which along with the HTTP Headers sent with a HTTP request can be bound to parameters in the SQL query or anonymous PL/SQL block. 

This is a very interesting feature that can be used outside of the Apex framework (ie in a barebones PL/SQL web application). Personally, I would prefer to be able to configure the resource templates somewhere in the database (in a special table and/or a predefined PL/SQL API), rather than messing around with the listener configuration, but the concept itself is a good one.

Anyway, it's an interesting read, so do take a look if you haven't already done so.