Where do I find info about Oracle EBS Public APIs?

Where do I find info about Oracle EBS Public APIs?

This is a question that I get multiple times each week in my role at API Wizard (a software product that leverages Oracle APIs).  

Oracle has make a huge investment, starting in Release 11 and continuing into each version of R12, in public APIs which allow you to perform nearly all of the same business processes that you can do with the Oracle forms.  You can create and update master data (customers, vendors, people, items, etc), transactional data (invoices, payments, orders, shipments, material transactions, etc), and configuration data (banks, value set values, etc).

Sounds great... and it is.  

But the question remains; how do you get a comprehensive list of available public APIs for Oracle EBS?

At a high-level, there are 4 main sources:

1) The Oracle Integration Repository
2) Oracle documenation
3) Metalink / My Oracle Support 
4) Web search

Let's break these down:

1) The Oracle Integration Repository

This is a resource that is part of every R12 system.  You access it using the seeded 'Integrated SOA Gateway' responsibility and choose the menu item 'Integration Repository'.  The Integration Repository contains about 70% of the Oracle APIs for whatever version of Oracle you're on, which doesn't sound great - but actually it's a huge accomplishment for Oracle as they have never had this information consolidated in one place before the integration repository. 

The Integration Repository provides a menu on the left broken out by module family and you can drill down to get to specific modules and then the public APIs or open interfaces available in those modules.  This is a great starting place -- but there are a few issues:

a) As mentioned above, if you don't find the API you're looking for here, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means it wasn't cataloged in the Integration Repository.
b) The Integration Repository in your environment will only list the APIs for the version of Oracle that you are running.  For example, if you are running 12.1.2 you'll see the APIs for version 12.1.2 but if you want to know if there is an API introduced in 12.1.3 (new APIs are added with each patchset), you can't determine that in your Integration Respository.
c) This is only available in R12.  The integration repository is not available in your R11 system.
d) The integration repository identifies the API and provides some information about the API parameters and a description of business process but it is not very detailed.

Oracle does maintain a version of the integration repository on their website at irep.oracle.com.  It used to contain R11 info and then was upgraded to R12 info but has been offline for the last few weeks.  It would be great if they would get that back online and provide the ability to search by version...  I am not holding my breath.

2) Oracle documenation (docs.oracle.com)

Oracle generates tons of documentation.  Each module mimimally has a user guide, an implementation guide, and a technical reference manual.  Some modules also have documents focusing solely on APIs and open interfaces, others embed this information into their other documents, and some don't document them at all.

It can be tedious work going through Oracle's documentation but worth when you find the guide that you need.  For the APIs and open interfaces which are documented, Oracle often provides sample scripts and talks about important concepts like environment initialization.

3) Metalink / My Oracle Support (support.oracle.com)

These days, good searching skills are often worth more than concrete knowledge.  There's a lot of information on metalink both in Oracle's notes/documents but also in Oracle forums, all of which you can search in one place.  I've found many an API this way.  Sometimes I get better results on google (see next bullet point) but sometimes Metalink is best.  

One thing to note is that if you have done your due dilligence but can't identfy an public API or open interface, you can raise an SR with Oracle and ask them if one exists.  Not only can they help you find it but if there is not, then can tell you if anyone has made an enhancement request for that API and you can ask them to add you to the list of customers requesting it.  That's one factor in how Oracle prioritizes its development initiatives.  

4) Web search

Not surprisingly, sometimes you get better information doing a web seach on google, bing, etc.   Actually, I often start here because if there are results I find them very quickly.  There are many forum questions (is there an Oracle EBS API for .....?) and there are many good blogs which describe working with these APIS.