Hello,
I understand that you will be providing output in JSON and I accept that it has advantages over XML.
However, as I will be using Oracle PLSQL which has powerful XML handling and very little JSON, I thought that I would ask the question. Oracle is of course the 2nd largest software company in the world.
Thanks,
Chris
If we supported XML, then we would also have to provide XML schemas, which would mean that any change we needed to make to the API would be a breaking-change for XML, and require client side development work. This shortcoming of XML has held back innovation and change with the existing Companies House XML Gateway, and caused frequent and expensive roll-out and version issues for our customer base.
However, Oracle has native support for JSON:
https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/ADXDB/json.htm#ADXDB6246
Hope that helps!
Hi,
Yes, I know that link.
I’ll have to live with JSON.
Thanks,
Chris
Hi,
For anybody else needing to use the new Companies House API with Oracle, here’s a little more information.
The link given previously refers to Oracle 12c, whereas most Oracle installations run on 11G or 10G. These versions of Oracle have no native facility to handle JSON. If you need to extract information you could use combinations of SUBSTR and INSTR to locate the data you need and cut it out.
It’s not elegant but it would work. Perhaps creating a function would make the code more readable.
Regards,
Chris