Goal:
Use APEX to receive REST response after issuing a REST POST call to a https server using basic authentication.
This should be easy seeing as it can be done using a simple command line tool or browser plugin.
I have spent the better part of 2 days trying to do what should be a simple task/test. Right now I haven't made any progress, except find out what doesn't work and uninstalling/reinstalling 12c cleanly is near impossible.
Background:
After attending OpenWorld 2015 want to try out APEX.
A vendor program has a REST API that we would like to use. Using curl (command line util) and Advanced REST client (Chrome extension), I have successfully sent a POST request with basic authentication (username & password) to the vendor's https server and received a response.
I then spent considerable time trying to get it to work on the test/development apex.oracle.com site. I received a few errors that I tried chasing down. I then found out the errors were because a Oracle wallet is needed with the https site's certificate. AND apex.oracle.com does NOT support this as it is for development only. Well I am trying to develop and test before attempting to move to production.
Next I tried using a local APEX installed on my laptop. Searched on how to setup the Oracle wallet, only to find out XE doesn't come with it. More wasted time. However supposedly a wallet can be created on a full DB and the file copied to XE. So I downloaded 12c, installed, and was able to import the certificate into a wallet. I copied it the XE, which fixed one of the errors and reveled another one. This time it was ACLs. I tried getting them to work, but gave up. I figured I would just use APEX that was already installed on the new 12c db. Well I couldn't get that working either, the URL to host:port/apex/apex_admin doesn't work. Searching around I could not find much doc for installing/setting up APEX on 12c, except that it is pre installed and just go to the url (that doesn't work for me)
I then tried uninstalling XE and 12c, as they were both installed on the same machine and I thought there might be a conflict. Well I tried a few times to get a clean deinstall/install with out success. Even tried a metalink article on removing all traces, that didn't work. When I run the installer it thinks there is a previous version installed.
I found instructions (Application Express Nuggets: Upgrading to Application Express 5.0 in Your Oracle Database Release 12.1 Multitenant Conta…) for installing APEX 5 on 12c, however the blog post states a 12c patch is required, which requires a 12c db with support. We are currently evaluating a couple solutions and if we could get this proof of concept working I have no doubt we would be purchasing 12c with support.
I really don't think setting up and testing consuming of REST services from a https server should take days..
Any help would be much appreciated.
Rob B.
P.S. sorry for the long winded post, very frustrated at how difficult this process has been AND hoping it might help someone else going through similar issues.
P.P.S. if the 12c install program can see previous installs, why can't it show what it is finding and/or remove it?