There is a vast amount of data available today and data is now
being collected and stored at a rate never seen before. Much, if
not most, of this data however is locked into specific applications
or formats and difficult to access or to integrate into new
uses.
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. The protocol emerged from experiences
implementing AtomPub clients and servers in a variety of products
over the past several years. OData is being used to expose
and access information from a variety of sources including, but not
limited to, relational databases, file systems, content management
systems and traditional Web sites.
OData is consistent with the way the Web works - it makes a deep
commitment to URIs for resource identification and commits to an
HTTP-based, uniform interface for interacting with those resources
(just like the Web). This commitment to core Web
principles allows OData to enable a new level of data integration
and interoperability across a broad range of clients, servers,
services, and tools.
