OData overview - OData (2024)

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In this article Protocol FAQs

OData (Open Data Protocol) is an ISO/IEC approved, OASIS standard that defines a set of best practices for building and consuming REST APIs.It enables creation of REST-based services which allow resources identified using Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and defined in a data model, to be published and edited by Web clients using simple HTTP messages.

OData helps applications to focus on business logic without worrying about the various API approaches to define request and response headers, status codes, HTTP methods, URL conventions, media types, payload formats, query options, etc.It provides guidance for tracking changes, defining functions/actions for reusable procedures, and sending asynchronous/batch requests.

Protocol

The OData Protocol is an application-level protocol for interacting with data via RESTful interfaces. It supports the description of data models, editing and querying of data according to those models. REST APIs that are based on OData are easy to discover and consume due to the OData metadata, a machine-readable description of the data model which renders in a human readable format and enables the creation of powerful generic client proxies and tools.

OData improves semantic interoperability between systems and follows these design principles:

  • Follow REST principles.
  • Keep it simple. Address the common cases and provide extensibility where necessary.
  • Build incrementally. A very basic, compliant service should be easy to build, with additional work necessary only to support additional capabilities.
  • Extensibility is important. Services should be able to support extended functionality without breaking clients unaware of those extensions.
  • Prefer mechanisms that work on a variety of data sources. In particular, do not assume a relational data model.

The OData Protocol is different from other REST-based web service approaches in that it provides a uniform way to describe both the data and the data model. This improves semantic interoperability between systems and allows an ecosystem to emerge. It follows these design principles:

The following image shows how different libraries can be used for server and client side implementations.OData overview - OData (1)

You can find more information on OData specification at OData.org.

OData overview - OData (2024)

FAQs

OData overview - OData? ›

The OData Protocol is an application-level protocol for interacting with data via RESTful interfaces. It supports the description of data models, editing and querying of data according to those models.

What is OData for dummies? ›

The simplest definition of OData would be that it is a standardized protocol built over existing HTTP and REST protocols supporting CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations for creating and consuming data APIs. Nickname: ODBC for the Web. 2. Entity Data Model and an OData metadata.

Is OData obsolete? ›

It was deprecated with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement v8. 0. Also known as the OData endpoint or REST endpoint when it was released, this endpoint only supports create, retrieve, update, and delete operations on tables.

What is OData service used for? ›

What Is OData and Why Do We Use It? OData is a Web protocol for querying and updating data, applying and building on Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub), and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to provide access to information from a variety of applications.

What is OData versus REST API? ›

OData and REST are related but distinct concepts. REST is an architectural style for building web APIs, while OData builds upon REST to define best practices for building RESTful APIs. OData provides additional features such as enhanced query capabilities and standardized metadata.

Is OData a SOAP or REST? ›

OData supports Representational State Transfer (REST)-based data services.

What is the purpose of OData in SAP? ›

SAP OData is a standard Web protocol used for querying and updating data present in SAP using ABAP, applying and building on Web technologies such as HTTP to provide access to information from a variety of external applications, platforms and devices.

Why not use OData? ›

Unnecessary Complexity

Another reason we're opposed to considering technologies like OData is the sheer amount of unnecessary complexity of the implementation itself.

What is the difference between OData and JSON? ›

JSON is just a data-interchange format based on JavaScript. REST is an architecture style whereas OData is a specific implemenation of REST designed to generate and consume data, which supports two formats, AtomPub and JSON.

Is OData asynchronous or synchronous? ›

OData Client for . NET provides a serial of Begin/End methods to support asynchronous operations, such as executing queries and saving changes.

What is the alternative to OData? ›

REST, GraphQL, JSON, SQL, and Prisma are the most popular alternatives and competitors to OData. Powerful collaboration, review, and code management for open ... Powerful collaboration, review, and code management for open ...

What is OData built on? ›

OData is a protocol for the creation and consumption of Web APIs. OData thus builds on HTTP, AtomPub, and JSON using URIs to address and access data feed resources.

Is OData same as ODBC? ›

OData has similarity with the ODBC in a sense that here, OData provides the middleware between producers and consumers to communicate data. There is a uniform way to consume data and is independent of the producer much like ODBC. The fact that OData is based on HTTP RESTful services makes it the ODBC for the Web!

What are the criticism of OData? ›

Overall the main criticisms of OData revolve around the perception of too much flexibility for the client to do what they want, but the reality is that in many projects we don't always know what the client wants in advance, so this flexibility becomes the main deciding reason to use OData, it is not always a negative ...

Is OData faster than REST? ›

OData vs REST APIs: Best Use Case

REST is used when there is a need to interact with a Data Source, for example, to retrieve data for all Products. It is easier and faster to parse data using REST APIs.

Is OData XML or JSON? ›

Introduction. OData supports two formats for representing the resources (Collections, Entries, Links, etc) it exposes: the XML-based AtomPub format and the JSON format.

Is OData the same as JSON? ›

OData is a similar specification to JSON API. Both of them describe a standard protocol for creation and consumption of RESTful APIs. GraphQL is a totally different approach to API design and specifies a different way of querying API resources.

What is OData in Web API with example? ›

The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a data access protocol for the web. OData provides a uniform way to query and manipulate data sets through CRUD operations (create, read, update, and delete). ASP.NET Web API supports both v3 and v4 of the protocol.

Is OData synchronous or asynchronous? ›

OData Client for . NET provides a serial of Begin/End methods to support asynchronous operations, such as executing queries and saving changes.

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