Open Data Protocol (OData) provides a way to unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in applications today. OData makes it easy for data to be shared in a manner that follows the philosophy of Open Data and enables the creation of REST-based data services. These services allow resources identified using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) and defined in an abstract data model, to be published and edited by Web clients using simple HTTP messages. It enables a new level of data integration across a broad range of clients, servers, services, and tools.
The OData SDK brings together a wealth of resources to help developers participate in the OData including:
- Sample OData online services (northwind, etc) – open a browser and test out an OData Service.
- OData client libraries
- Windows Phone 7 series
- iPhone
- AJAX\Javascript
- PHP
- Java
- .NET
- Silverlight
- Online OData explorer (Source code also available for download from odata.org)
- Data Service Provider toolkit: Whitepaper and sample WCF Data Services provider implementation to demonstrate how to create a data service over *any* data source
- OData validation tool: A test harness and a few sample validation tests to make it easy to validate your OData endpoint. The harness is designed to be easily extended allowing anyone to easily add new tests.
- Netflix has exposed their catalog of movies via OData at http://odata.netflix.com
- Microsoft codename ‘Dallas’ exposes datasets in the cloud and allows developers to access and monetize them using OData
- SQL Azure now features an “OData easy button” – a one click experience to get your SQLAzure database exposed as an OData feed
For more information about OData, please visit its web site at: http://www.odata.org/