Learn about application catalogs and cloud native applications in Oracle Cloud Native Environment (Oracle CNE).

An application catalog is a searchable collection of software that can be installed into a Kubernetes cluster. Installed catalogs can be searched using both the Oracle CNE Command Line Interface (CLI) and the User Interface (UI).

Catalogs have a straightforward life cycle. They can be added and removed, but not changed.

Two types of application catalogs can be configured within a cluster: an Oracle catalog, and an external community catalog.

An application catalog is set up in two flavors: a Helm repository, and a service that's compatible with Artifact Hub (an external catalog). The Oracle catalog is a Helm repository, while an external catalog typically points to artifacthub.io and is compatible with Artifact Hub.

A Helm-based catalog is a collection of Helm artifacts, namely an index.yaml file, and a set of tarballs. These can be made available and served by any URI that can be read by an Oracle CNE component (the ocne CLI, the UI, and Helm).

An external catalog must be compatible with the Artifact Hub API. In practice, this means the external catalogs are served by an instance of Artifact Hub.