Unexpected behaviour using SSO Authentication for APEX

A customer of mine switched to a Singe Sign On Authentication Scheme for their APEX application - using Oracle Access Manager, but that's irrelevant to this case.

In the application there's a function to create an - temporarily - "real" APEX user. That APEX user is used in another JavaScript application that uses ORDS and the built-in APEX authentication - thus requiring the existence of APEX users. That function ran flawlessly when the application was still on APEX Authentication. But after switching to SSO, it complained about "ADMIN" privileges .... although the usernames are identical: SSO and APEX Authentication used the same usernames.

So it must be something in the authorization / security realm, isn't it? Thus we tried a smart thing and moved that particular function to another - APEX Authenticated - application, while sharing the login credentials via a cookie. But to no avail. Some complaint.

So I contacted the APEX Development team and - as always - I got a quick reply. It wasn't a bug. It's a feature. They explained that you can only use functionality that needs APEX Admin privileges if you are authenticated against the APEX Repository. An - accidental (?) - match on usernames is not enough to grant ADMIN privileges. And that totally makes sense....

So although it was unexpected behaviour, it is the correct behaviour!

BTW. the solution is to create a separate job that runs using the right privileges.

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