A standard API for Data Access Best way to REST . Queryable and interoperable RESTful APIs. OASIS -approved industry standard. Uniform way to describe both data and the data model . What is OData?
Why OData why not RESTful Services. REST is an architectural style, but it is not a standard. It leaves few design decisions open to us. How should we name our resources? How should we support paging? What about data shaping or querying data? Which status code should be returned? Well this is where OData comes into the picture.
OData Resource operation. GET POST PUT PATCH DELETE
OData Resource representation. OData uses different formats for representing data and the data model. Data: JSON, Atom(xml) http:// services.odata.org/v4/OData/OData.svc/Products Data Model: CSDL (Common Schema Definition Language) http:// services.odata.org/v4/OData/OData.svc/$metadata
Tools & Libraries RESTier provides facilities to bootstrap an OData service like what WCF Data Services (which is sunset ) does. XOData is a generic OData API/Service visualizer and explorer .