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Overview
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Overview

SYS.OWA_SEC is a core Oracle-supplied PL/SQL package that belongs to the Oracle Web Agent (OWA) toolkit, a foundational component of the Oracle HTTP Server / PL/SQL Gateway architecture on which Oracle E-Business Suite relies for browser-based access. The package provides the security and session-identification primitives used by the mod_plsql / PL/SQL Gateway layer to authenticate incoming HTTP requests, capture client identification details, and enforce a protection realm around restricted content. In Oracle EBS 12.1.1 and 12.2.2, this package is owned by the SYS schema and is exposed to the PUBLIC role as a public synonym, making its routines callable from any schema, including APPS and the EBS technology stack schemas.

The package is marked VALID in the ETRM inventory and is classified as an OTHER API type, indicating it is a utility/security library rather than a business API. It forms part of the infrastructure that governs how the EBS application server and the database-tier PL/SQL cartridge communicate securely during user sessions.

Key Procedures and Functions

The ETRM metadata documents six callable members of SYS.OWA_SEC. Parameter lists are not documented here and are deliberately omitted.

  • SET_AUTHORIZATION — Establishes the authorization context for the current request, allowing the gateway to record or apply the credentials submitted by the client for subsequent processing.
  • GET_USER_ID — Returns the user identifier associated with the authenticated request, supplying the identity that downstream packages use for session and auditing purposes.
  • GET_PASSWORD — Returns the password value captured from the request, enabling validation of the presented credentials by the security layer.
  • GET_CLIENT_IP — Returns the IP address of the originating client, supporting logging, diagnostics, and access-control decisions.
  • GET_CLIENT_HOSTNAME — Returns the hostname of the requesting client, complementing the IP information for auditing and identification.
  • SET_PROTECTION_REALM — Defines or applies the protection realm that scopes which resources require authentication, controlling the boundary of protected content served through the PL/SQL Gateway.

Together these routines constitute the read-side accessors and write-side setters for the request security context maintained during a web request.

Tables Accessed

The ETRM metadata records no base tables or APPS-synonym tables referenced directly by SYS.OWA_SEC. This is consistent with its role as an in-memory request-context and security utility: the values it manipulates (user, password, client IP, client hostname, protection realm) are populated from the HTTP request environment maintained by the PL/SQL Gateway rather than persisted to database tables by the package itself. Any logging or persistence of these values is performed by calling code, not by OWA_SEC.

Usage Notes

SYS.OWA_SEC is an internal infrastructure dependency rather than a package invoked directly from EBS forms or concurrent programs. As documented, it references OWA_UTIL and the STANDARD package, and is itself referenced by OWA and OWA_CUSTOM, both of which consume its security facilities during request handling. Because the package is granted to PUBLIC, custom PL/SQL deployed in EBS that runs inside the PL/SQL Gateway or an OHS-fronted servlet context may call its accessors to obtain client or credential context. Administrators and developers should treat OWA_SEC as Oracle-owned technology-stack code: it must not be modified, and any custom invocation should be read-only (for example, retrieving client identification details) to avoid interfering with gateway authentication behavior. Its presence should be expected and left VALID in both 12.1.1 and 12.2.2 environments.