Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure supports application development in a wide variety of programming languages and platforms.

In general, regardless of the language you use to build an application, you follow the same guidelines to build an application that takes advantage of the high-performance and continuous-availability features of an Autonomous Database:

• Connect through an Oracle client. When you connect to the database through an Oracle client, almost all connection-management operations are performed by the client, permitting you to concentrate on the business logic of your application. Depending on your programming language, you use the Oracle Database JDBC Driver or the Oracle Instant Client.

• Use connection pools. When you code your application to use connection pools instead of creating and destroying connections individually, you gain performance improvements and permit the Oracle client you connect through to perform continuous-availability operations automatically. How you code to use connection pools depends on your programming language.

• Connect to the appropriate database service. Autonomous Database provides several pairs of database services to use when connecting to your database. These pairs of database connection services are designed to support different kinds of database operations, as described in Predefined Database Service Names for Autonomous Databases.

Also regardless of the language you use to build an application, you perform the same basic tasks to configure your system to support application development:

1. Download and install the basic software to develop in the given language. For example, you download and install JDK to develop Java applications.

2. Download and install any extension library or module necessary to permit applications in the given language to connect to an Oracle Database and make SQL calls. For example, you download and install the cx_Oracle extension module to develop Python applications.

3. Download and install the Oracle client appropriate for the given language and extension library or module.

4. Download the client credentials for the database and make them available to Oracle client you installed.

For instructions on performing the last two steps for Oracle Database JDBC Driver, see Prepare for JDBC Thin Connections. For instructions on performing these steps for Oracle Instant Client, see Prepare for Oracle Call Interface (OCI), ODBC, and JDBC OCI Connections.

For some languages and platforms, you can follow specific step-by-step instructions instead of the general guidelines, as discussed below.