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Catalyst OData Usage

The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a web protocol for querying and updating data. OData provides a way to unlock your data and free it from application silos. 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 various applications, services, and stores. OData exposes and accesses information from various sources including relational databases, file systems, content management systems, and traditional websites.

Note: For more information about OData, see http://www.odata.org/.

OData adds the following functionality to AtomPub:

• A convention for representing structured data
• A resource addressing scheme and URL syntax
• Common query options such as filter and sort
• A schema that describes resource structure, links, and metadata
• Payload formats and semantics for batch and unit-of-work requests
• Alternate representations of resource content (JSON)

The Catalyst OData URL has the following general format:

http://<hostname>:7000/node/odata/<module>

The OData URL follows the same syntax as the REST URLs, except that you specify "odata" instead of "rest". The default format is AtomPub. To retrieve JSON format, append "?$format=json" to the URL.

You can also specify OData query filters. For example, code similar to the following queries aborted processes:

http:/<hostname>:7000/node/odata/CA:00074_CA:00074:01/ITActivity?$filter=StateDescription eq 'Aborted'

Note: For more information about the OData specification, see http://www.odata.org.