The document introduces OData, an open protocol for querying and updating data across systems in a RESTful manner. It discusses why OData was created, including a use case where a flexible data protocol was needed. It then demonstrates how to expose and consume data using OData with WCF Data Services and various client tools. The presentation argues that OData provides a versatile alternative to WS-* that is easier to understand and use.

1. OData
Data for a flexible world

2. • The holy grail for data for the web
• Data for a mashup-world
• ...
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3. Agenda
• Odata
– The whys
• Motivation
• Reasoning
– The hows
• Stuff
– What is it?
– Data format
– Query language
• Neat stuff
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4. Caveat
• No c/p
• No snippets
• No lunatic scrolling / zooming
• No (I hope) typing
• Lots of straight-forward examples
• Lots of talk
• Lots of inspiration
• Stuff available on bitbucket later (or tomorrow)
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5. Me
• Jesper Lund Stocholm
• 39 yrs old
• Worked for CIBER for about 7½ yrs
• Married with (two) children
– Go figure how much time I had to prepare for this 
• Senior architect, public sector
– Railroads, utilities (SmartGrid), Environment
protection
– MVP for 5 yrs, Office System, Data Platform
Development
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6. Whys
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7. Whys
• Realworld example
– Online self-service solution for DONG Energy
– Customer wanted basic consumer CRUD-functionality
– Heavy traffic during peak periods
– SAP backend (using SAP PI)
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8. Whys
• So what did we do?
• We created a WS-* endpoint
• Exposed something like this
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9. Whys
• We gave them what we wanted
– No more, no less
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10. Whys
4 months later
”We want to include email address and a list of the
customer’s invoices”
What did we do?
• We added this to our backlog
• We prioritized it
• We planned development and for
– Deployment, DEV, TEST, PROD
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11. Whys
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12. Whys
• We came back and said:
”We can have it done in 6 weeks”
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13. Whys
• They replied
”The UI’s already done – we need the back-end in
place my Monday”
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14. Whys
• A more flexible tool
• A more versatile tool
• A more easy-to-understand tool
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15. Whys
• RESTy/RESTful way of
– Accessing data
– Exposing data
• HTTP-centric
– Uses known HTTP verbs like
GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
– Lends itself to simple clients
– Clientside scripting languages/tools like jQuery etc
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16. Whys
• Payload of either ATOM or JSON
– With strong type declarations
• Provides a LINQ’ish query language on top of it
all
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17. Whats
• Open Data Protocol
– ” The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a Web protocol
for querying and updating data that provides a way to
unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in
applications today.”
– Standardization at OASIS
• Key players: Citrix, IBM, Microsoft, Progress Software, SAP,
and WSO2
• www.odata.org
– In Microsoft stack, part of WCF Data Services
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18. Hows
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19. Hows
• Show how to expose data
– Using WCF Data services
• Show how to consume data
– Using various client tools
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20. DEMO
How to expose data

21. Hows
• What have we learned?
– Extremely easy
– Very powerful
– Provides data flexibility
– Easy to configure
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22. DEMO
How to consume data

23. WS* vs. OData
• Chose the right tool
• WS-* is awesome!!!
– SOAP is sexy!
– Also HTTP-based
• Closely consider your requirements
• Closely consider your security requirements
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24. OData is everywhere
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25. OData is everywhere
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26. OData is everywhere
• SAP speaks OData
• SharePoint speaks OData
• Excel speaks OData (PowerPivot)
• Mongo speaks OData
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27. Contact
Jesper Lund Stocholm
Jesper.stocholm@ciber.com
@jlundstocholm
Demo code and scripts available at
https://bitbucket.org/jlundstocholm/warmcroc
conf
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28. Oh yes ...
We’re hiring!
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