Last November at PDC 09 we announced the Open Data Protocol (OData), providing a way to unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in applications today. OData makes it easy for data to be shared in a manner that follows the philosophy of Open Data and enables the creation of REST-based data services. These services allow resources identified using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) and defined in an abstract data model, to be published and edited by Web clients using simple HTTP messages. OData enables a new level of data integration across a broad range of clients, servers, services, and tools.

This morning during the Keynote at Mix 2010, Doug Purdy announced the re-launch of OData.org and the release of the OData SDK.

The OData SDK brings together a wealth of resources to help developers participate in the OData Eco-system including:

  • Sample OData online services (northwind, etc) - open a browser and test out an OData Service.
  • OData client libraries
    • Windows Phone 7 series
    • iPhone
    • AJAX\Javascript
    • PHP
    • Java
    • .NET
    • Silverlight
  • Online OData explorer (Source code also available for download from odata.org)
  • Data Service Provider toolkit: Whitepaper and sample WCF Data Services provider implementation to demonstrate how to create a data service over *any* data source
  • OData validation tool: A test harness and a few sample validation tests to make it easy to validate your OData endpoint.  The harness is designed to be easily extended allowing anyone to easily add new tests.

Also announced today at Mix, there are some new OData services available publicly:

  • Netflix has exposed their catalog of movies via OData at http://odata.netflix.com
  • Microsoft codename ‘Dallas’ exposes datasets in the cloud and allows developers to access and monetize them using OData
  • SQL Azure now features an “OData easy button” - a one click experience to get your SQLAzure database exposed as an OData feed

How can you get involved in the OData ecosystem? Check out OData.org – Expose OData – and the next time you’re developing an app ask yourself, is there a feed for that? 

- The OData Team