​Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) provides many options for authenticating users. These include OAuth client, APEX User, Database Schema User and OS User. While it is important to ensure your ORDS web services are secured, you also need to consider what a client has access to once authenticated. As a quick reminder, authentication confirms your identity and allows you into the system, authorization decides what you can do once you are in. In this post, I will dive into roles and privileges and explain their part in authorizing access to ORDS web services for OAuth clients.

​Let’s start with a diagram to show how roles and privileges fit into the overall OAuth security model for ORDS.

A role acts as the link between one or more users and one or more privileges. You assign a role to one or more OAuth clients.
 
A privilege details what is secured by that privilege. When creating a privilege, you can secure either an entire module or secure based on URL patterns.
 
A URL pattern is part of the full URL for a web service or group of web services. If you have a module called ‘ev’ then you can secure all services in that module using the URL pattern ‘/ev/*’.

Take the following three modules in an ORDS enabled schema called ‘XXORDS’.

Let's say we want to do achieve the following:

• Allow services in the twillio module to be completely open (i.e. no authentication)
• Protect the 'utils' and 'ev' modules
• Allow the OAuth client ‘ADMIN_CLIENT’ access to any services in the 'utils' and 'ev' modules
• Allow the OAuth client ‘EV_CLIENT’ access to services in the 'ev' module

 
Note: Prior to creating any privileges, all of your ORDS web services will be publicly accessible.
 
Roles
Based on the above, we will need to create two roles ‘ADMIN_ROLE’ and ‘EV_USER_ROLE’.

We will also need to create two privileges. One to protect web services in the ‘ev’ module and one to protect web services in the ‘utils’ module.

Privilege 1 - EV_DATA_ACCESS
While creating this privilege, we will at the same time, link the privilege to both the 'EV_USER_ROLE' and the 'ADMIN_ROLE' roles. An OAuth client associated with either of these roles will be able to call the charge points web service:

• https://example.com/ords/xxords/ev/charge_points

​Note: The pattern ‘/ev/*’ starts after the base URL for your ORDS enabled schema. In our case, this is anything after https://example.com/ords/xxords.
 
This is what the privilege looks like from SQL Developer:

Privilege 2 - UTILS_DATA_ACCESS
While creating this privilege, we will only link the privilege to the 'ADMIN_ROLE' role. Only OAuth clients associated with this role will be able to call the 'dbinfo' web service:

• https://example.com/ords/xxords/utils/dbinfo

​If we stopped here, then there would be no way to access any web services in the ‘ev’ or ‘utils’ modules. The act of associating a privilege with a module or URL pattern effectively locks them down. We need to create OAuth clients and link them to the roles we created so that these clients can access web services in these modules.

OAuth Client 1 - EV_CLIENT
This script creates the OAuth client EV_CLIENT using the grant type ‘client_credentials’. It then grants the newly created client access to the EV_USER_ROLE. At this point the EV_CLIENT can call web services in the ‘ev’ module.

​OAuth Client 2 - ADMIN_CLIENT
This script creates the OAuth client ADMIN_CLIENT using the grant type ‘client_credentials’. It then grants the newly created client access to both the EV_USER_ROLE and the ADMIN_ROLE. At this point the ADMIN_CLIENT can call web services in the ‘ev’ and ‘utils’ modules.

In this post, I demonstrated how to use roles and privileges to provide fine grained access to your ORDS web services. ​​This is important when ensuring OAuth clients only have access to the web services they are supposed to. Unless your web service has to be public (e.g. if it is a Web-hook) then you should seriously consider adding OAuth security. 

Click here for more on OAuth security in ORDS.

​I continue to be impressed with what may seem like minor features released by the APEX development team that turn out to be a big deal because they end up saving hundreds of lines of code. One such feature is APEX Email Templates introduced in APEX 18.1. In this post I will describe how we used them for much more than just Email Templates when building a notification framework for one of our customers.

​The goal of the project was to build a notification framework that could be used to handle just about any kind of notification that you can imagine. This includes email (via APEX_MAIL and Mailgun), SMS via Twillio and push notifications to iOS Apps using Firebase. We ended up building a generic notification queue which we processed on a schedule to send out the actual notifications. You may ask, how do APEX Email templates apply to all of these communication methods? The answer lies in the APEX_MAIL PL/SQL API apex_mail.prepare_template. Read on to find out why.

The goal of templating in the context of notifications is to separate the content of the  notification from the format and layout of the notification. This allows you to alter the template without having to change any code (most of the time). All of the notification methods I mentioned above can benefit from templating.
 
Let’s take email as an example. Let’s say we have an email we want to send to a customer when they place an order. In the email you want to provide information related to the product they purchased, how it will be shipped, and when they can expect it to arrive. You could build a PL/SQL function that generates the complete HTML document and then use that for the content of your email. This would mean, however, that when the marketing department needs to change the layout of the email, you have to change that function, regression test and deploy code. Being able to just change a template has obvious advantages.
 
As we move forward, I will use the example of the New Order notification and create an APEX email template which can be used for SMS, APEX_MAIL and Mailgun.

​Since APEX 18.1, under Shared Components, you will see an option ‘Email Templates’. Click that option then click ‘Create Email Template >’ to create a new template. 

On the right-hand side, you have the option to start with a ‘Sample Template’. Clicking one of the samples will pre-populate the template with the sample. This is a great way to see how templates work.

Placeholder Variables
The template works using boilerplate text (and HTML) and placeholder variables. These must be enclosed in a #, must be uppercase and must have no spaces. In the email subject above, you can see an example #ORDER_NUMBER#. Placeholders are replaced at run time by apex_mail.send and apex_mail.prepare_template (more on that later).
 
HTML Header, Body and Footer

In this section you provide the boilerplate text, HTML and placeholder variables that you need to format the data elements in your notification. Although the HTML you enter here impacts the format of your notification (e.g. bold text, links, tables etc.), it does not drive the overall structure of the email. This is driven by the ‘HTML Template’ field in the ‘Advanced’ section.

You can load a default Template by clicking the ‘Load Default HTML’ button.  The APEX team has provided a pretty nice-looking template that works well with browsers and email clients (see below for a screen shot). Of course, you can change this and even copy and paste templates from open source providers like Zurb.
 
Plain Text
Finally, there is a section for Plain Text. There are still some email clients out there that only support plain text, so it is good practice to provide a Plain Text as well as an HTML formatted email body. This section also comes in handy for SMS templates.

I have a template now but how do I know exactly how it’s going to look? This introduces the first use case for apex_mail.prepare_template. Create a simple PL/SQL block like the following and run it.

​Note: p_application_id refers to the APEX Application that the template was created in.
Note: The placeholders in the JSON passed in p_placeholder are also substituted in the subject and the Text Body.
 
The API will substitute all of the place holders in the template ‘NEW_ORDER_NOTIFICATION’ with values in the placeholder JSON. Save the results from the dbms_output into a file with a .html extension and open it using your browser. You can now iterate until you have the template looking just how you want it. Of course, it wouldn’t take much additional effort to create an APEX page to show a preview of the template.

​As well as prepare_template, APEX 18.1 brings a new ‘send’ function which handles the call to prepare_template as well as sending the actual email.

​How is this useful for other notification methods like Mailgun and Twillio? Well, just because it says APEX Email Templates on the box does not mean that is all it is good for.
 
Mailgun
Just like APEX_MAIL.SEND, the Mailgun API looks for three main parameters: subject, text (body) and html (body). We can get all of these values from our APEX Email Template using the apex_mail.prepare_template. We then use the results from this API call to call the Mailgun API to send the actual email.

​Twillio
The Twillio Messages API also expects a message body to send an SMS, but as you may expect we would not want to send HTML in the body. For SMS templates we need to focus on the Plain Text Format portion of the template. You also do need to provide values for subject and HTML body, but it can just be dummy text.

​The call to the prepare_template API is identical to the one above; we just need to pass different placeholders and we only want to consume p_text from the response.

​All you need to do then is send the content of p_text using the Twillio API, and Voila!

​Multi-language is also covered. If you have multi-language enabled for your app, when you seed an publish your APEX application, a language translated version of the template is also generated. Once you provide translations for the text, the template can be generated in the users session language.

​APEX Email Templates are a great feature, I think there is still room for improvement though and here are my suggestions for the APEX Dev Team:

• Provide capabilities to store and retrieve templates by language.
• Create an API to create and update templates. That way, developers can create a template building page for end users to manage the templates.
• Create an ‘apex_’ view on the templates table WWV_FLOW_EMAIL_TEMPLATES.

​APEX Email Templates, like many other APEX features have been well thought out and provide real value to developers (and their end users). They can also be used for much more than just email templates so don’t let my examples limit you.

​APEX Social Sign-In has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for authenticating users into APEX. Whilst it is a catchy name, I propose the name ‘Social Sign-In’ is selling these new authentication capabilities short. I believe ‘Social Sign-In’ actually has far wider reaching implications for both Enterprise and B2C APEX applications.

For sure, APEX Social Sign-In allows you to authenticate users using Google and Facebook and that is great. Many enterprises, however, are using dedicated cloud-based identity management providers such as Okta and Auth0 to authenticate their employees. In addition, B2C web sites and mobile Apps also use these products to handle identity management for their customers. These products provide a host of identity management features such as Single Sign-On, Lifecycle Management, User Management, Multi-factor Authentication to name a few. Being able to use products like these with APEX just by entering a few configurations in a setup page (rather than having to write hundreds of lines of code) is a game changer. It also raises the profile (and credibility) of APEX in an enterprise and consumer setting.
 
Level set on what is federated identity management
Instead of me taking up space in this post, I came across the following article which is a great primer on federated identity management aimed at developers. https://hackernoon.com/federated-identities-a-developers-primer-655a160d66cb

So, why do I even need a third part identity provider? As with most things ‘Cloud’, the answer is security and convenience. Let’s take a look at each of these justifications in a little more detail.

Security
My job is to develop secure, scalable web applications that provide real business value. I am not an expert in cryptography or how you should best prevent user accounts from being compromised. Reputable companies that do nothing else but build identity management solutions, on which their reputation depends, will do a better job than me. Also, in this day and age, you do not want to be responsible for the safe keeping of your user’s credentials. There are more than enough documented nightmare scenarios out there to convince us of that.
 
Convenience
Let’s say my IT department demands that all users start using two-factor authentication. If I had built my own authentication solution, I am now on the hook for building two-factor authentication into my application. While that sounds like a fun side project, it is certainly not a cheap one. Again, we are back to can I implement this more securely than an expert? Using products like Okta and Auth0, it is simply a matter of enabling the feature (and paying for it). Products like these also take care of forgotten passwords, user on-boarding and many other tedious aspects of providing identity management for your users.

So, what did we have to do before Social Login was available? I was rudely reminded of this recently when I was asked to build a custom authentication scheme (in APEX 4) to allow users of an internet-facing B2B APEX application to login via Okta. I had to hand code every URL re-direct, every web service call and don’t get me started on how I had to implement the callback to APEX after authentication into Okta. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that this was even possible in APEX 4 is a testament to the flexibility of the APEX Authentication Scheme. There was, however, clearly room for improvement.

All this changed with the introduction of APEX Social Sign-In. For a basic authentication scenario, all you need to do on the APEX side is create a set of Web Credentials and fill out 4 fields in an Authentication scheme. Zero code required!
 
In a bid to convince the same APEX 4 customer to upgrade to APEX 18.2, I created a demo showing them how easily we could authenticate Okta users using Social Sign-In. For the remainder of this post, I will focus on what configurations were required to complete this demo and authenticate Okta users into APEX.

​Let’s start with the obligatory diagram to show what is going on when you authenticate an Okta user into APEX.

1. The user accesses a page in the APEX application. If the user already has a valid APEX session, then they will be allowed to access the page. If they do not, then the APEX authentication scheme will direct the user to Okta.
2. If the user already has a valid Okta session, then they will be immediately re-directed back to APEX, otherwise they will be directed to an Okta login page.
3. The user will enter their Okta username and password.
4. Assuming login is successful, Okta will re-direct the user back to APEX.
5. When Okta calls the ‘Callback URL’, it provides a Java Web Token (JWT) which includes the following information:
   1. The ‘state’, which is a value APEX passed to Okta at the beginning of the flow. APEX will verify that the ‘state’ returned in the JWT matches the one it created at the beginning.
   2. The user name of the Okta user.
   3. An authorization code which can be used to use to get a token to call additional Okta web services.
6. Once logged in, we can call web services in Okta to get additional information about the user e.g. what groups they belong to, their full name, address etc.
7. At this point, APEX will direct the user to the home page of the APEX App.

 
There, aren’t you glad you didn’t have to code any of that (well at least up until step 6)! 

​Before we get into the APEX configurations, we need to create an Okta account and configure our application in Okta. Okta has a free developer account (https://developer.okta.com/signup/) which allows you to try Okta out.
 
As previously mentioned, Okta has a whole bunch of features which I won’t get into in this post. Instead I will review the Okta configurations needed for the Demo APEX App to login using OpenID Connect (OIDC). Note: The example below was created using our corporate Okta account, but this should also work using an Okta developer account.
 
Application Definition
You need to define each application you want to authenticate in Okta. This is much the same as you would for Google or Office365 authentication. Start by Adding an application in Okta, be sure to select Platform = ‘Web’ and Sign on method = ‘OpenID Connect’.

​The following screen shots show the already configured application followed by descriptions of what values to provide.

​At this stage, we are essentially just picking the Application type and saying we want to use the ‘Authorization Code’ grant type OAuth flow.

This is the interesting part:

• Login redirect URIs
  • This is the APEX URL that Okta will re-direct to when your user has successfully logged into Okta. apex_authentication.callback is a special URL that accepts a JWT from the identity provider and authenticates the user into APEX.
• Logout redirect URIs
  • This is the URL that Okta will direct your user to when they logout.
• Login initiated by
  • Here you can decide if only your App can initiate login or if login can be initiated by Okta. We want ‘App Only’.
• Initiate login URI
  • This is not applicable when Login initiated by is ‘App Only’.

​Okta will generate client credentials for each Application you create. We will use these when creating our APEX ‘Web Credentials’ below.

​In the above section, we are identifying that we want to use OpenID Connect as our authentication method.

​Finally, in the above section, we can determine which Okta users (and or Groups) should have access to our Application.

​With our Okta configurations complete, we can now configure our APEX Authentication Scheme.
 
Web Credentials (these come from Okta)
Start by creating a set of ‘Web Credentials’. Here you will provide the Client ID and Client Secret provided by Okta above.

• Credential Store
  • This is the credential store we defined previously.
• Authentication Provider
  • I chose ‘OpenID Connect Provider’ because a) it is supported by Okta and b) it involves the least configuration. It essentially self discovers all of the information it needs to authenticate against the provider from a JSON document which is publicly accessible.
• Discovery URL
  • This is the discovery URL which APEX uses to find out everything it needs to know to authenticate against the provider. Okta provides this information via a JSON document. The JSON document includes all of the web service end-points (/token, /userinfo, /logout etc.), supported scopes etc.
• Scope
  • The list of scopes determine what pieces of additional information about the user you are allowed to fetch after login to Okta. This information can be accessed by calling the Okta /userinfo web service. In this example, I can get openid information, email address, user profile information and the groups a user belongs to.
• Username Attribute
  • This is the attribute returned from Okta that APEX uses to set the APEX username (:APP_USER) of the logged in user.

And, that is it, the APEX configuration is complete!
​

Patching for APEX 18.2​
If you are running APEX 18.2, be sure to apply the PSE bundle patch for APEX 18.2 ‘Patch 28727865: PSE BUNDLE FOR APEX 18.2 (PSES ON TOP OF 18.2.0.00.12)’. This fixes a bug when using ‘OpenID Connect Provider’ as the ‘Authentication Provider’ in your authentication scheme.

Firewalls, Wallets and Proxies
If you are working with APEX on-premise you have to consider how APEX is going to call out to the identity provider and how the identity provider is going to be able to callback into APEX. For the call out to happen, you have to either install the appropriate certificates from the identity provider in a wallet on your database server or create a proxy to facilitate this. You may also have to create ACLs to even allow network traffic to leave your database. For the identity provider to make the callback, your APEX environment must be accessible to the internet.

In this post, I have tried to illustrate how easy it is to configure APEX Social Sign-In to authenticate APEX users with products like Okta. Okta is one of many cloud identity management providers that you can use to for handling identity management for your APEX users. With APEX Social Sign-In there are less and less reasons to store passwords in your database. 

Hopefully I have convinced you that its scope reaches far beyond Twitter and Facebook. So, what name should we use instead of 'APEX Social Sign-In'? My vote goes for 'Super simple mechanism for logging users into APEX using just about any consumer or enterprise identity provider you care to mention with zero code'. Something tells me, however, this won't fly with the marketing folks!