Learn the latest industry trends surrounding REST API standardization and what this means for your roadmap. OData is an OASIS standard REST API and has been established among tech companies such as Microsoft, SAP, CA, IBM and Salesforce. GraphQL was created by Facebook in 2015 and has already been deployed at tech companies such as Facebook, Shopify and Intuit. ORDS is the Oracle REST API and delivers similar standardization for Oracle-centric applications.

1. Industry REST API
debate: OData vs
GraphQL vs ORDS
Progress DataDirect Partner Summit

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Agenda
 Introduction to standard APIs to query data
 Contrast the APIs for adoption in analytics and data management tools
 Examples
 What you should with this info?

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Introduction to standard APIs to
query data

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REST is great, BUT from an analytics and data management perspective...
 It’s a style – not a standard
 Metadata support?
 Limited querying capabilities

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Introduction to standard APIs to query data
OData GraphQL ORDS
An open protocol to allow the
creation and consumption of
queryable and interoperable
RESTful APIs in a simple and
standard way.
• Started by Microsoft in 2007
• Ratified as an OASIS standard
on February, 2014
• Approved for release by
ISO/IEC on Feburary, 2017
Data query language for APIs
developed internally at Facebook in
2012 before public release in 2015.
GraphQL provides a complete and
understandable description of the
data in your API, gives clients the
power to ask for exactly what they
need and nothing more, makes it
easier to evolve APIs over time, and
enables powerful developer tools.
Oracle REST Data Services
(ORDS) is a powerful tool that
enables developers with SQL and
other database skills to build
enterprise class, data access APIs
to Oracle Databases that today’s
modern, state-of-the-art application
developers want to use, and indeed
increasingly demand to use, to build
applications.
60 Groups at Oracle including
Oracle RDBMS, TimesTen, and
NoSQL

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Contrast the APIs for adoption in
analytics and data management
tools

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Contrast the APIs for adoption in analytics and data management tools
OData GraphQL ORDS
Standard query
capabilities
Yes Yes Yes
Writes Yes Yes Yes
Surfacing metadata Yes Yes Yes
Maturity of specification Yes No Yes
API versioning /
maintenance
Yes No Yes

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Contrast the APIs for adoption in analytics and data management tools
OData GraphQL ORDS
Delta Response (CDC) Yes No No
Transactions Yes, change sets No Yes, SQL pass through
Open Source
Community
Yes Yes No
Client libraries Yes Limited No
Extensible Yes Yes No
Bulk data Yes (Batch Read/Write) No Yes (Load)

9. Standard Query Capabilities

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Standard query capabilities
Operations OData GraphQL ORDS
Filtering Yes No Yes
Ordering Yes No Yes
Aggregation No No No
Joining Yes Yes No
Paging Yes No Yes

11. Writes

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Writes
OData GraphQL ORDS
HTTP Operations
Writes happen via HTTP POST,
PATCH, and DELETE
operations. Data to be
inserted/changed is included in
the payload.
Mutations
A mutation is an operation that
“mutates” the underlying data
system. Mutations are how you
create, read, update, or delete
(CRUD) data.
Handlers
ORDS will auto-generate
handlers to perform basic CRUD
operations on single tables or
views. These include query all
rows, query individual row, insert
single row, bulk insert, update,
and return metadata.

13. Surfacing Metadata

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Surfacing Metadata
Operations OData GraphQL ORDS
Schema Metadata Yes Yes Yes
Object Metadata Yes Yes Yes
Object
Details
Data Types Yes Yes Yes
Scale/Precision Yes No No
Read/Write No No No
Unique No No No
Primary Keys Yes No Yes
Description Yes Yes Yes
Nullability Yes Yes No

15. API Versioning and Maintenance

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API versioning and maintenance
 GraphQL has positioned itself to take care of the headaches associated with API
versioning and maintenance
 The biggest problem leading to this headache with Rest APIs is that all of the fields are
returned when you query an endpoint
• API developers have no window into whether or not clients are relying on information in
specific fields
• Client developers must process all of the fields returned even if they do not need the
information
 Solved this problem by forcing clients to specify exactly which fields they require
• API developers can proactively reach out to known consumers of fields to migrate off of
deprecated fields
• Response includes information about which fields are deprecated

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API versioning and maintenance
 OData provides similar functionality
• Does support providing select list to limit the number of fields returned to those needed by
application
– This reduces response size and processing in application
• Does not provide a mechanism to indicate that fields are deprecated
 OData is more flexible in that queries can be easily written to return all fields
 OData is adding schema versioning to the specification to deal with this problem

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Examples

19. Metadata

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OData
 serviceRoot/$metadata

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GraphQL
 Obtain metadata by
writing GraphQL
queries against
predefined types
• __schema
• __type

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ORDS
 HTTP GET
https://server:port/ords/crm/opportunities/{id}

23. Queries

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OData – return all accounts
 HTTP GET serviceRoot/ACCOUNTS

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GraphQL - return all accounts
 HTTP POST

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ORDS - return all accounts
 HTTP GET https://server:port/ords/ords-test/metadata-catalog/account

27. Queries | Inner Join

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OData – return all opportunities for an account
 HTTP GET <OData service root
url>/ACCOUNTS?$expand=OPPORTUNITIES($select=NAME,AMOUNT)

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GraphQL - return all opportunities for an account
 HTTP POST

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ORDS – return all opportunities for an account
 Must define handler to generate response in PL/SQL

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ORDS – return all opportunities for an account
 HTTP GET https://server:port/ords/ords-test/demo/test

32. Queries | Order By

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OData - orderBy
 HTTP GET serviceRoot/OPPORTUNITIES?$orderBy=name

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GraphQL - orderBy
 HTTP POST

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ORDS - orderBy
 HTTP GET https://server:port/ords/crm/demo/opportunity/q="$orderby": {“name":
“ASC"}

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What you should do with this info?

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Our recommendations for analytics and data management
OData GraphQL ORDS
BUY
Generally recommend supporting
OData as a consumer and in an
open analytics strategy for
producers.
Bulk data is not yet supported, but
there are data management tools
adopting it today for sources that
support OData exclusively.
HOLD
GraphQL remains very new and it
certainly addresses some of the
challenges in working across
different REST APIs.
HOLD
ORDS appears to be database
centric today and not yet widely
adopted by the vast portfolio of
SaaS applications.
We will continue to serve on the
OData technical committee to drive
the specification forward for our
partners.
We will continue to monitor
adoption and research how we can
leverage the popular concepts to
deliver improved API connectors.
We will continue to monitor adoption
and continue to research where
support for it can improve the
experience for our partners.