Question

What exactly is OData and how important/necessary is it to start learning this new concept, wrt implementing data services?

Also why is the WCF Data Services documentation so tightly coupled with OData?

Edit: Based on answers here’s a follow-up question – I shouldn’t be trying to implement WCF Data Services sans OData,or I can do that but that would mean doing it the tougher way(reinventing the wheel)?

Answer 1

To answer the second question first, OData (or the Open Data Protocol) is the evolution of Project Astoria/ADO.NET Data Services and is Microsoft’s attempt to create an “open standard” for creating readable/writable data using REST. OData is the open protocol that ADO.NET/WCF Data Services uses to implement its functionality, and was directly created as a result of use in several Microsoft products, thus the tight connection.

As for the WHAT, OData is, in essense, a set of extensions to the Atom Publishing Protocol that enable data representation, querying, alternate formatting (JSON), etc.

Here are a couple of good resources to get you started:

• OData is grease to cut data friction
• Microsoft Proposes OData as de facto Web Data Protocol
• OData – Getting Started