OAC is a fairly simple product offering just enough functionality to locate and consume services and APIs. However, there may be a need within an organization to extend its functionality to meet business requirements. So, how do we extend the capabilities of OAC?

The Repository Extensibility Framework (REX) is an RPC/Encoded SOAP API that essentially exposes all subsystems of OAC as web services. This is the same subsystem that underpins the OAC console, the interface used by the JDeveloper plug-in and also the Harvester. Using the REX API developers can extend OAC beyond its standard functionality.

There are several use cases where extending OAC makes sense. In the case of WBCV, the following use cases were considered, some of which were actually implemented: