ODATA is a open standard protocol initiated and led by Microsoft but it is supported by different platforms vendors. You can find more about this protocol from http://www.odata.org/.General idea of ODATA is expose data over HTTP services for query or update.ODATA embraces REST architectural style.One thing we give up with REST in general is that if you have ever been expose to WCF, WCF includes metadata with the services and that means you could generate client proxies to call those services very easily.When you go to REST based services you could lose that.REST in general has no protocol for metadata but the ODATA includes metadata specification for services, that means for ODATA endpoint you can expose that metadata and has some client side code generation for consuming the endpoint.ODATA is broken down in to two parts
1.ODATA Query Syntax : URL syntax for expressing queries
- Data Service URI
- Entity set name
- Navigation Property
- Operators and functions
2.ODATA Formatting: ATOM publising Protocol or JSON formatting
- application/atom+xml or application/json
- JSON Verbose vs JSON Light
ODATA also leverages HTTP verbs such as GET,POST,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,MERGE
ODATA Supported Platforms
- WCF Data Services(Initial OData Microsoft platform)
- Node.js,PHP,Java
- SSRS(SQL Server Reporting Services)
- Sharepoint
- Windows Azure Table Storage
- Windows Azure Data Marketplace
- IBM WebSphere/DB2/Informix
- ASP.NET WebApi
Enjoy..Reading