What is the ODATA?

Hi all,

Its been so long from my last post.
Sorry for that, i am busy these days and don't get time to put my experiences in the BLOG.

As we all know a new Service is available in NAV 2013 aka ODATA.

Let's try to figure out what is OData?

OData is 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.OData does this by applying and building upon Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores.

In reference to Navision there are something that we need to keep in Mind while using OData -


1. It is not currently possible to access codeunits with OData web services.

2. OData web services are currently read-only. 
You cannot update data in a Microsoft Dynamics NAV database using an OData web service.

The OData standard is well suited for web service applications that require a uniform, flexible, general purpose interface for exposing create retrieve update delete (CRUD) operations on a tabular data model to clients. 

OData is less suited for applications that are primarily RPC-oriented or in which data operations are constrained to certain prescribed patterns. 

OData supports Representational State Transfer (REST)-based data services, which enable resources, identified using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), and defined in an abstract data model (EDM), to be published and edited by web clients within corporate networks and across the Internet using simple Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) messages. 

OData services are lightweight, with functionality often referenced directly in the URI.

OData is supported in PowerPivot, a data-analysis add-in to Microsoft Excel 2010 that provides enhanced Business Intelligence capabilities.

We will discuss OData in future posts.

Regards,
Saurav Dhyani
www.sauravdhyani.com