New Features

• VecDB developer REST APIS added. Requires Oracle AI Database 26ai (23.26.1).
  • Execute vector similarity searches
  • List, create, describe, delete, and update vector tables
  • Generate code samples (Python and cURL) for batch loading data
  • Full lifecycle vector index management
  • CRUD operations for vectors in vector tables
  • Manage transformer models (ONNX)

• ORDS now supports loading new database pools at runtime without a restart
• ORDS AutoREST tables and views with vector columns now support vector search via POST /vectorSearch
• ORDS Export APIs now include DROP statements to remove modules, privileges, and roles that have been deleted in the source environment, ensuring they are also removed from the target environment - enabling better CI/CD
• New MongoDB API configuration setting: mongo.legacyUuidRepresentation

OpenTelemetry metrics

• ORDS now batches API response times to the OCI Metrics service, reducing overall metrics volume
• OpenTelemetry support for ORDS metrics now includes additional spans and finer-grained breakdowns of API response times, including:
  • get-services: get service definitions
  • get-metadata: get metadata
  • schema-check: schema check
  • sql-exec: execute SQL script
  • gen-result: generate result

SQL Developer Web

• New Vector database development interface, manage transformer models, create vector tables, and perform vector searches. Requires Oracle AI Database 26ai (23.26.1)
• The About window now reports both the ORDS software version and the ORDS database repository version, and displays a footer warning if they do not match
• In Data Loader, for XML/JSON sources, you can now select a specific key to upload only that content
• Improved accessibility and usability
• SQL Worksheets now support running queries that return duplicate column names. Also applies to REST Enable SQL Service

 

Bugs Fixed

• Better memory management for internal caches
• High memory usage in SQL Developer Web for the SQL formatter endpoint
• ORDS upgrade using the --bequeath-connect option fails on Oracle Database 19c
• Install/uninstall using TNS fails when the specified TNS folder does not exist; error: "cannot invoke 'java.nio.file.path.getfilesystem()' because 'path' is null"
• 404 due to a route-matching conflict between specific and parameterized- ORDS templates with a shared prefix
• SQL Developer Web SQL Worksheet showed the wrong arguments for a procedure in the navigator; the corresponding DB API endpoint was also wrong: _/db-api/stable/database/objects/arguments
• In SQL Developer Web, NLS date and time format session parameters were not honored when running queries after ALTER SESSION SET NLS_....
• Alias in paths file not displayed at ORDS startup with mapped pools

 

Supported Java Versions

• Oracle Java 17
• Oracle Java 21
• Oracle GraalVM Enterprise Edition for Java 17
• Oracle GraalVM Enterprise Edition for Java 21

 

Important: Action required for Tomcat and WebLogic administrators

Starting with ORDS 26.4 (planned for Winter 2026), Oracle REST Data Services will add support for Tomcat 10 and WebLogic 15. This means that ORDS will no longer run on older versions of WebLogic and Tomcat.

What This Means for You

As of ORDS version 26.4:

• Apache Tomcat users: ORDS will no longer be compatible with Tomcat 9 (or earlier). Upgrade to Tomcat 10 (recommended: 10.1.x) or later.
• Oracle WebLogic Server users: ORDS will no longer be compatible with WebLogic Server 14c (or earlier). Upgrade to WebLogic Server 15 (or later).

Until this change has been implemented, ORDS still requires Tomcat 9 or WebLogic 14, do not attempt to migrate before ORDS 26.4 is released. ORDS Standalone is unaffected by this change.