Are BING geocoding & Google geocoding a web-service, or web-api? - oracle

Question

I want to pull just the latitude and longitude (for some addresses in oracle table) from BING or Google. I want to do this from stored procedure. I tried to do this using the UTL_DBWS package, but I am not able to form a complete call as I am missing details like 'operation', 'input parameter request format' etc. I couldn't find wsdl file for both the geocoding services. So are these services actually a web-api or web-service? What is the best way to call these services from oracle stored-proc?

Answer 1

You can check this example which uses utl_http to get a good idea on how you can do it
Couple of things you need to take care
1)You need direct internet connection from database server
2)You need to edit your database ACL policy for this to work
3)You need to escape "&" symbol in the URL you use for searching
4)You need to validate the SSL certificate using Oracle wallet
The ACL Example
BEGIN
--You need DBA to execute this function where www.xml is the ACL Name
--SCOTT is the schemaname,my.oracle.com is the host to access the webpage
DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.CREATE_ACL(acl => 'www.xml',
description => 'WWW ACL',
principal => 'SCOTT',
is_grant => true,
privilege => 'connect');
DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.ADD_PRIVILEGE(acl => 'www.xml',
principal => 'SCOTT',
is_grant => true,
privilege => 'resolve');
DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.ASSIGN_ACL(acl => 'www.xml',
host => 'my.oracle.com');
END;
/
COMMIT;
you can add additional Host names for accessing the internet to the ACL www.xml like the below
BEGIN
DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.ASSIGN_ACL(acl => 'www.xml',
host => 'www.google.co.in');
END;
/
COMMIT;
here is an example of latitude and longitude search using google
declare
httpuri HttpUriType;
x clob;
address VARCHAR2(32000):='New York';
lat_long_value VARCHAR2(4000);
begin
UTL_HTTP.set_transfer_timeout(60); --set timeout to 60 seconds
httpuri := HttpUriType('http://www.google.co.in/search?q=find+latitude+and+longitude+of+' ||address||'&'||'ie=utf-'||'8&'||'oe=utf-'||'8&'||'aq=t'||'&'||'rls=org.mozilla'||':'||'en-US'||':'||'official'||'&'||'client=firefox-a');
x := httpuri.getclob();
lat_long_value := regexp_substr(x, '<div class="_Xj">(.+)</div>');
if lat_long_value is not null then
select regexp_replace(lat_long_value,
'<div class="_Xj">(.+)</div>',
'\1')
into lat_long_value
FROM dual;
end if;
dbms_output.put_line(lat_long_value);
end;
If you get the error that
Ora-29024 Certification validation failure
Kindly follow the steps required to add the google certificate to Oracle wallet here
Finally you get the output is
40.7127° N, 74.0059° W