You did not mention, what package you would like to use in Python to make REST. 

  • if it's FastAPI, with this package you can use SQLAlchemy and sqlalchemy-iris 
  • Django, with this framework, then just use django-iris

In any case, I would recommend looking into SQLAlchemy, and its API, which has many features, of course including the way to list tables, as well as list columns in tables, and lots of other features.

If you are going to use some other package for making REST API, and this library does not support SQLAlchemy, let me know, I'll have a look, and may implement IRIS for this library too.

Looks like the database was created with a different collation, and contains a few globals with this collation. 

I don't remember, but I think in the messages.log it should show which collation is expected. And then, you can change it in Management Portal, and with NLS. When you activate NLS which contains the expected collation, it will be able to mount this database.