Oracle: SYSDBA/SYSOPER role, TNS mode, wallet, and certificate import on iOS

[datlechin]

Problem

TablePro's Oracle connection form has three fields: connection type, service name, SID. Every Oracle-native client has more, and their absence blocks real connections rather than just being a convenience gap.

Follow-up from #2033 / #2034, which deliberately scoped these out.

Missing, in rough priority order

Role (Normal / SYSDBA / SYSOPER). Every Oracle-native client has it: SQL Developer, SQL Developer for VS Code, Toad ("Connect As"), DataGrip. SQLPro for Oracle advertises it on iOS. Without it there is no way to connect as SYSDBA, which is required for startup, shutdown, and much of the administration surface. Missing on macOS and iOS.

TNS / tnsnames.ora mode. All five desktop clients surveyed offer it (DataGrip, DBeaver, SQL Developer, SQL Developer for VS Code, Toad). Users with an existing TNS setup expect to point at a network alias instead of retyping host, port and service. Missing on macOS and iOS. On iOS this needs a document picker plus somewhere to keep the file, since there is no $TNS_ADMIN on disk.

Oracle Wallet. docs/databases/oracle.mdx currently states the driver does not read wallet files. Dodona for Oracle ships wallet support on iOS, so it is a real competitive gap for Autonomous Database users who were handed a credentials zip. Oracle's own VS Code client treats Cloud Wallet as a first-class connection type rather than a field.

Certificate import on iOS. Different in kind from the other three, and iOS-only. macOS stores CA, client certificate and client key as filesystem paths. Those paths do not sync, so an Oracle connection created on a Mac with a custom CA reports the file as unavailable on iPhone. #2034 made that failure explicit and actionable instead of an opaque NIOSSL error, but there is still no way to supply the certificate on device. The verify modes do work today against publicly trusted servers such as Autonomous Database, because they fall back to the system trust store when no path is set.

ConnectionFormView already uses fileImporter for SSH keys, SQLite and DuckDB files, so the pattern exists. The open question is storage: certificate bytes would need to live in the keychain or an app-group container, and a decision about whether they sync.

Ordering

The first three do not exist on macOS. They must land there first, because:

• The macOS field list is declared by OraclePlugin.additionalConnectionFields, which ships inside the registry plugin. Adding a field means a plugin change plus a plugin-oracle-v* re-release.
• The additionalFields keys are the sync wire format. If iOS invents a key the Mac does not read, a connection silently loses the setting when it round-trips. feat(ios): Oracle support in TablePro Mobile #2034 added a test pinning the three existing keys for exactly this reason.
• iOS has no plugin loading, so its form is hardcoded and mirrors whatever macOS declares.

The SSH auth method split is the precedent for what happens when the two sides diverge: macOS and iOS have separate SSHAuthMethod types and iOS silently downgrades anything it does not recognize.

Suggested split

Each of these is its own change and probably its own issue once picked up. Role is the smallest and highest value: one dropdown, one additionalFields key, and the connect call passes it through as an OracleNIO authentication mode.

[datlechin]

Role is done in #2043 (SYSDBA and SYSOPER, both platforms). It needed no fork change: OracleNIO already carries the auth mode on the wire via Configuration.mode and AuthenticationMode.sysDBA / .sysOPER.

The remaining three are still open, but the research changed their ordering, so recording it here.

Wallet is now the cheapest of the three on macOS, ahead of TNS. I had ranked it third on the assumption we would have to build the PEM/PKCS12 plumbing ourselves. We would not: oracle-nio ships TLSConfiguration.makeOracleWalletConfiguration(wallet:walletPassword:) and a pemFile: variant, both public, and the fork's own DocC documents the ADB recipes. On macOS that is roughly a folder-path field, a password field, and a branch in OracleTLSMapper.

Caveats found while checking:

• The helper reads ewallet.pem. ADB Dedicated wallets ship only ewallet.p12, so that tier needs NIOSSLPKCS12Bundle.
• Never target cwallet.sso. It has no published specification and its local-SSO variant is machine-bound.
• iOS is still the blocker: a wallet is a folder, and a sandboxed app cannot address one by path. That asymmetry, not the difficulty, is the reason to defer.

TNS is now last. It needs a tnsnames.ora parser written from scratch, and without fork changes it gives up multi-address failover.

Separately, the ADB paragraph in docs/databases/oracle.mdx was wrong and is corrected in #2043: walletless TLS also requires an access control list or private endpoint, and mTLS is served on port 1522 only. Relevant now because Oracle's DigiCert G1 distrust took effect in April 2026, so wallets generated on or before 28 January 2026 have stopped working. One-way TLS is unaffected.