How to Connect Oracle AI Private Agent Factory to Oracle EBS Using SQLcl MCP Server over SSE

Over the past few weeks, I have been hands-on with Oracle AI Private Agent Factory (PAF) on OCI, and one of the most interesting challenges I faced was connecting PAF to a classic Oracle EBS (E-Business Suite) database that sits on a private subnet. There was no documentation that covered this end-to-end, and I had to piece things together through trial, error, and a fair amount of troubleshooting.

In this blog, I am going to walk you through everything I did — from installing SQLcl on Oracle Linux 9.7, understanding why a bridge is needed between SQLcl MCP and PAF, dealing with SELinux, cross-VCN networking on OCI, and finally getting PAF to talk to your EBS database through the MCP server. If you are doing something similar, this is the guide I wish I had.

Understanding the Architecture

Before we dive into commands, let me explain what we are building and why each component exists. This is the flow:

PAF (VCN 1, Private Subnet)  →  SQLcl MCP VM (VCN 2, Private Subnet)  →  EBS Database (VCN 2, Private Subnet)

Oracle AI Private Agent Factory is an agentic AI platform that orchestrates AI agents to perform tasks — including querying databases. It communicates with external tools using the Model Context Protocol (MCP), but it expects MCP servers to be reachable over HTTP/SSE (Server-Sent Events).

SQLcl is Oracle's command-line interface for Oracle Database. From version 25.2 onwards, it ships with a built-in MCP server that you can activate with a single flag — sql -mcp. However, SQLcl's MCP server speaks stdio (standard input/output), not HTTP. This is the core challenge.

💡  PAF speaks HTTP/SSE. SQLcl MCP speaks stdio. You need a bridge between them — that bridge is mcp-proxy running on the same VM as SQLcl.

The mcp-proxy tool (Python) wraps the SQLcl stdio process and exposes it as an HTTP/SSE endpoint on port 8080. Once that endpoint is live, PAF can discover and call all five SQLcl MCP tools as if they were a native HTTP service.

The following are the OS details in my OCI environment,

OS - Oracle Linux 9.7 (OL9) OR Oracle Linux

Architecture - x86_64

RAM - Minimum 4 GB 

Disk - Boot volume at least 100 GB

Network - Private subnet 

User - oracle user with sudo access

Software Prerequisites

● Java 17 or higher (JRE/JDK) — SQLcl is Java-based

● SQLcl 25.2 or higher — includes the built-in MCP server

● Python 3.11 or higher — required for mcp-proxy

● mcp-proxy Python package — the stdio-to-SSE bridge

Section 1: Installing Java 17 on Oracle Linux 9

The first thing you need is Java 17 or higher. Do not touch the system Python or any system-managed Java — install a clean version alongside what is already on the system.

# Install OpenJDK 17

sudo dnf install java-17-openjdk -y

# Set JAVA_HOME

echo 'export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-17-openjdk' >> ~/.bashrc

echo 'export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc

source ~/.bashrc

# Verify

java -version

💡  On OL9, OpenJDK 17 is available directly from the default dnf repositories — no third-party repo needed.

Section 2: Installing SQLcl

Download SQLcl 25.2 or later from Oracle's official download page (requires an Oracle account). Once you have the zip file, extract it to a standard location.

# Create the install directory

mkdir -p /home/oracle/sqlcl

# Unzip (replace with your actual downloaded filename)

unzip sqlcl-25.x.x.zip -d /home/oracle/sqlcl/

# The binary is called 'sql' — not 'sqlcl'

# This is a common gotcha!

export PATH=/home/oracle/sqlcl/bin:$PATH

# Verify

sql -version

💡  The binary is named 'sql', not 'sqlcl'. This trips up almost everyone the first time. All commands going forward use 'sql', including sql -mcp.

Section 3: Saving the EBS Database Connection

The SQLcl MCP server relies on connections saved in its credential store at ~/.dbtools. You must save your EBS connection with the -savepwd flag before the MCP server can auto-connect to it.

# Launch SQLcl

/home/oracle/sqlcl/bin/sql /nolog

# Inside SQLcl — save EBS connection with password

SQL> conn -save ebs_mcp -savepwd apps/yourpassword@//ebs-db-hostname:1521/EBSDB

# Verify it saved correctly

SQL> connmgr list

SQL> exit

If your EBS database uses a tnsnames.ora entry, set TNS_ADMIN first:

export TNS_ADMIN=/home/oracle/network/admin

sql /nolog

SQL> conn -save ebs_mcp -savepwd apps/yourpassword@EBSDB

Section 4: Installing Python 3.11 and mcp-proxy

Your Oracle Linux 9 ships with Python 3.9, which is tied to system tools like dnf. Do not upgrade or replace it. Instead, install Python 3.11 alongside it — they coexist cleanly on OL9.

# Install Python 3.11

sudo dnf install python3.11 python3.11-pip -y

# Verify

python3.11 --version

# Install mcp-proxy using Python 3.11

python3.11 -m pip install --user mcp-proxy

# Add local bin to PATH

echo 'export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc

source ~/.bashrc

# Verify

mcp-proxy --version

💡  mcp-proxy requires Python 3.10 or higher. If you try to install it with the system Python 3.9, it will fail with 'No matching distribution found'. Always use python3.11 -m pip install for this package.

Why mcp-proxy and What It Does

Let me explain this clearly because I got confused about this myself. There are several bridge tools in the MCP ecosystem — mcp-remote, mcp-proxy, supergateway — and they all sound similar but do different things.

For our use case — wrapping SQLcl MCP (stdio) and exposing it as HTTP/SSE for PAF — mcp-proxy (Python) is the correct tool. It spawns sql -mcp as a child process, handles stdio communication internally, and exposes a clean SSE endpoint on port 8080 that PAF can register and call.

Section 5: Creating the Wrapper Script and systemd Service

The Wrapper Script

Create a shell script that sets all required environment variables and launches mcp-proxy with the correct arguments. Pay attention to using absolute paths — systemd does not load your .bashrc, so relative paths and ~ expansions will not work.

cat > /usr/local/bin/sqlmcpserver.sh << 'EOF'

#!/bin/bash

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-17-openjdk

export TNS_ADMIN=/home/oracle/network/admin

export PATH=/home/oracle/.local/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/java-17-openjdk/bin:/home/oracle/sqlcl/bin:$PATH

exec /home/oracle/.local/bin/mcp-proxy \

  --port=8080 \

  --host=0.0.0.0 \

  -- /home/oracle/sqlcl/bin/sql -mcp

EOF

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/sqlmcpserver.sh

💡  Keep your scripts in /usr/local/bin rather than /home/oracle. Oracle Linux 9 runs SELinux in Enforcing mode by default, and scripts in home directories carry the user_home_t context which systemd refuses to execute (you get status=203/EXEC). Scripts in /usr/local/bin automatically get the bin_t context that systemd accepts.

The systemd Service

Create a systemd unit file to manage the service lifecycle — auto-start on boot, auto-restart on crash, and proper logging via journald.

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/sqlcl-mcp.service

[Unit]

Description=SQLcl MCP HTTP/SSE Server for PAF

After=network.target

[Service]

Type=simple

User=oracle

ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/sqlmcpserver.sh

Restart=always

RestartSec=5

StandardOutput=journal

StandardError=journal

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

sudo systemctl enable sqlcl-mcp

sudo systemctl start sqlcl-mcp

sudo systemctl status sqlcl-mcp

A healthy service output looks like this:

Active: active (running) since Wed 2026-07-01 06:20:07 GMT

Main PID: 318054 (mcp-proxy)

INFO: Uvicorn running on http://0.0.0.0:8080

INFO: Application startup complete.

💡  Watch for 'http://0.0.0.0:8080' specifically. If you see '127.0.0.1:8080', add --host=0.0.0.0 to your mcp-proxy command — otherwise PAF cannot reach it from outside the VM.

Section 6: SELinux — The Silent Blocker

This deserves its own section because it cost me a significant amount of troubleshooting time. Oracle Linux 9 runs SELinux in Enforcing mode by default. If your script is in /home/oracle, systemd will refuse to execute it with status=203/EXEC — even if the file has execute permissions and a valid shebang.

The quick way to diagnose this:

getenforce

# Enforcing

ls -lZ /home/oracle/sqlmcpserver.sh

# -rwxr-xr-x. oracle oinstall unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0

The context user_home_t is the problem. The solution is simply to move your script to /usr/local/bin where it automatically gets the bin_t context that systemd trusts. Alternatively, if you must keep it in the home directory, you can relabel it:

sudo dnf install policycoreutils-python-utils -y

sudo semanage fcontext -a -t bin_t "/home/oracle/sqlmcpserver.sh"

sudo restorecon -v /home/oracle/sqlmcpserver.sh

💡  Never disable SELinux permanently to work around this. It is there for a reason — especially on a VM that holds database credentials. Fix the context, not the policy.

OS Firewall on SQLcl VM

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=8080/tcp

sudo firewall-cmd --reload

sudo firewall-cmd --list-ports

Verify Connectivity End-to-End

# From SQLcl VM — confirm EBS DB is reachable

nc -zv <ebs-db-private-ip> 1521

# From PAF VM — confirm SQLcl MCP SSE endpoint is reachable

curl -N http://<sqlcl-vm-private-ip>:8080/sse

Section 7: Registering SQLcl MCP in Oracle AI Private Agent Factory

Once the SSE endpoint is confirmed reachable from the PAF VM, registering it in PAF is straightforward.

● Open PAF UI → Settings → MCP Servers → Add

● Name: SQLcl-EBS-MCP

● Endpoint URL: http://<sqlcl-vm-private-ip>:8080/sse

● Transport: SSE

● Authentication: None (for private subnet deployments)

● Click Connect — status should change to Connected

Once connected, PAF will automatically discover all five SQLcl MCP tools:

Thanks & Regards,

Chandan Tanwani