Two announcements at MIX10 provide technologies to get your data to your end users.

• Microsoft has released an SDK for OData.
• The second CTP has shipped the information marketplace called Microsoft code-named “Dallas”  using OData.

The technologies enable you to build immersive, cross-platform Web and phone applications that use data delivered from the cloud.

ISVs can think of these announcements from a several perspectives:

• Providing data to new customers through a subscription model though the Cloud using Code Name “Dallas”.
• Providing data from your data centers directly to your customers using OData.
• Providing data from your customer data in OData so they can use their data in new and unique ways.
• Provide new applications that provide new interfaces to customer data, your data, and other data on Windows 7 or Windows phone 7. 
• Provide templates for products such as Excel PowerPivot for your customers to build their own reports, pivots.

About OData

Microsoft also released an SDK for OData. OData is an HTTP and Atom-based approach to data portability. OData supports a number of languages and platforms including .NET, Java, PHP, Objective-C (iPhone and Mac) and JavaScript.

The Open Data Protocol (OData) provides a way to unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in applications today, making it easy for data to be shared in a manner that follows the philosophy of Open Data. OData enables a new level of data integration across a broad range of clients, servers, services, and tools.

What is OData

OData adds the following to AtomPub:

• A convention for representing structured data
• A resource addressing scheme and URL syntax
• A set of common query options (filter, sort, etc.)
• Schema describing resource structure, links and metadata
• Payload formats and semantics for batch and “unit of work” requests
• Alternate representations of resource content (JSON)

Since OData is based on AtomPub, it is possible for OData clients and services to be written with minimal extra code allowing them to work with AtomPub (and GData) data..

Microsoft Supports OData

There is a growing list of products that implement OData.  Microsoft supports the Open Data Protocol in SharePoint Server 2010, Excel 2010 (through SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel), Windows Azure Storage, SQL Server 2008 R2, Visual Studio 2008 SP1.  Support in other Microsoft products is currently underway.

OData Resources

You can get the OData SDK at http://www.odata.org/developers. Also, see the video there that describes how you can work with OData.

For more information about OData, see Open Data Protocol on MSDN.

Find out who is providing data using OData at OData Producers.

See blog post OData interoperability with .NET, Java, PHP, iPhone and more.

See Channel9 Video: Interoperability with Open Data Protocol: OData SDK for PHP demo

Code Name “Dallas” CTP

Microsoft announced the second Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Microsoft code-named “Dallas,” an information marketplace powered by the Windows Azure platform, which provides developers with access to third-party datasets that can be consumed by Web and mobile applications.

You can make your content and data available with an OData feed via “Dallas”. You can access and monetize your data under your terms and pricing. You data can be can built into applications to deliver unique user experiences.

Today, developers can take advantage of more than 30 datasets from content providers, including NAVTEQ, Pitney Bowes Business Insight, Weather Central and Zillow.com, available on the “Dallas” information marketplace.

Dallas APIs allow developers and information workers to consume this premium content with virtually any platform, application or business workflow.

You can download “Dallas” CTP2 at http://www.Microsoft.com/Dallas.

To try out data in the Code Name “Dallas” catalog, see https://www.sqlazureservices.com/Catalog.aspx

Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation