To have access to data contained in an Oracle database, any of the following applications can be used except:

To access data contained in an Oracle database, you typically use query languages or protocols designed for database interaction. Let's examine each option:

• a. XQuery: XQuery is a query language for XML data. Oracle databases have robust support for XML, allowing you to store, manage, and query XML data using XQuery.
• b. SQL / XML: SQL (Structured Query Language) is the primary language used to interact with relational databases like Oracle. Oracle also supports SQL/XML, which allows SQL to query and manipulate XML data stored within the database.
• c. WebDAV: Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that allows clients to perform remote web content authoring operations. While it can be used to manage files on a web server, it is not a direct method for querying or accessing structured data within a relational database like Oracle.
• d. HTML: HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the standard markup language for creating web pages and web applications. HTML is used to structure content for display in a web browser. It does not have capabilities to directly connect to or query a database. A web application built with HTML would use a backend language (like Java, Python, PHP, Node.js) and SQL (or other database APIs) to interact with the Oracle database, and then present the results using HTML.

Therefore, HTML itself cannot be used to directly access data in an Oracle database.

The final answer is $\boxed{\text{d. HTML}}$