A
Austin Hellman
Guest
OData continues to grow in popularity. Get your questions about this versatile new standard answered in our Q&A below, or rewatch our webinar on the topic to learn more.
Webinar replay alert! In case you missed it, here’s your chance to listen to Roderick Peace (Director of Product Management, Oracle), Mike Pizzo (Principal Software Architect, Microsoft) and Sumit Sarkar (Chief Data Evangelist, Progress) in their webinar discussing OData external data integration strategies for SaaS.
The Rise of OData
OData was introduced by Microsoft a few years ago as a scalable, open source REST interface. Its self-service integration has caused an explosion of data sources, leading SaaS vendors to adopt OData. OData is also gaining popularity in traditional data integration patterns because it enables easy, point-and-click out-of-the-box solutions.
Webinar Highlights
Webinar Title: OData External Data Integration Strategies for SaaS
Presenters:
During the webinar replay, you’ll:
Missed the live webinar? Don’t worry! Watch the webinar replay now.
Top Q&As Around OData
Question: When looking at producing OData, is it recommended to support 2.0, 4.0, or both for compatibility within the ecosystem?
Answer: If you are interested in working with government data or you’re interested in working with enterprises particularly outside of the US, then OData 4.0 becomes much more interesting to you due to standardization through OASIS now coming through ISO to make it more open. Also, if you are starting a new project, trends are moving toward 4.0 so we would encourage you use 4.0. Not all industries or all your clients support 4.0 yet—Excel supports 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 but Tableau only supports version 2. Pursue 4.0 for new projects but make sure to check with your clients and ensure they support it first!
Question: Can you only read data in Salesforce from the external data source?
Answer: In Salesforce Connect’s previous iteration (Lightning Connect), it was read only, but since then they have introduced read/write support. Oracle Service Cloud also supports read/write in their implementation. When you create native objects, you can not only read from the OData end point but you can also write back to the OData source.
Question: Can you cite any OData use cases in the mobile space—iOS, Android or other?
Answer: Office 365 is a great example of a large service which wanted to make data more universally available. They aligned with OData as a REST API and were able to reach iOS and Android. They built an iOS and Android library that makes it more accessible and encapsulates some Office-specific semantics, but they are optional to use, you can consume them directly.
The other thing that works really well for mobile is JavaScript because almost any of those different platforms support JavaScript. And as I mentioned before there is an Olingo library for JavaScript for consuming OData version 4.0 services.
Question: How does OData play into the Internet of Things?
Answer: OData is useful for services that have interesting information behind them. For instance, Redfish is a great example of a management API with lots of data behind it. The Redfish specification uses OData to describe the current state of your disk drives, chassis, and other components that make up your data system. You can also query that system and send commands like reset or format and so forth through an OData-based REST API.
At one point, the team at Microsoft had something called the Internet Information Services (IIS) that was very OData-centric. It used OData to describe devices you were talking to and sent that data to do things such as turn lights on and off. It was interesting to use OData as a control the API for those individual devices, but it became much more interesting when the data from those devices was aggregated and placed in the cloud. Take thermostats for example; this enabled you to use OData to query information such as temperature, when the heat comes on, the weather that day, your calendar, or when you are home or away.
Question: When will the OData accelerator be available for Oracle Service Cloud?
Answer: February 2016 is the current target date for the OData Accelerator but Oracle doesn’t publish firm dates prior to the official release.
Put Your Knowledge to Use
Now that you have heard from some of the biggest experts in OData, you may be ready to try it yourself! We offer a simple way to OData-enable the leading enterprise and cloud data sources, allowing them to be accessed by the OData tool or application of your choice. This allows you bi-directional data access to leverage read and write support for OData entry points for any application or data source. Try DataDirect Cloud today and start harnessing the power of OData.
Continue reading...
Webinar replay alert! In case you missed it, here’s your chance to listen to Roderick Peace (Director of Product Management, Oracle), Mike Pizzo (Principal Software Architect, Microsoft) and Sumit Sarkar (Chief Data Evangelist, Progress) in their webinar discussing OData external data integration strategies for SaaS.
The Rise of OData
Webinar Highlights
Webinar Title: OData External Data Integration Strategies for SaaS
Presenters:
- Roderick Peace, Director Product Management, Oracle Service Cloud
- Mike Pizzo, Principal Software Architect, Microsoft
- Sumit Sarkar, Chief Data Evangelist, Progress DataDirect
During the webinar replay, you’ll:
- Gain a clear understanding from Microsoft of the OData ecosystem across consumers and producers
- Learn why the OData standard was selected as an external data integration pattern for Oracle Service Cloud
- See firsthand how OData hybrid data connectivity enables point-and-click integration to external data of all shapes and sizes, deployed on-premise or cloud
Missed the live webinar? Don’t worry! Watch the webinar replay now.
Top Q&As Around OData
Question: When looking at producing OData, is it recommended to support 2.0, 4.0, or both for compatibility within the ecosystem?
Answer: If you are interested in working with government data or you’re interested in working with enterprises particularly outside of the US, then OData 4.0 becomes much more interesting to you due to standardization through OASIS now coming through ISO to make it more open. Also, if you are starting a new project, trends are moving toward 4.0 so we would encourage you use 4.0. Not all industries or all your clients support 4.0 yet—Excel supports 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 but Tableau only supports version 2. Pursue 4.0 for new projects but make sure to check with your clients and ensure they support it first!
Question: Can you only read data in Salesforce from the external data source?
Answer: In Salesforce Connect’s previous iteration (Lightning Connect), it was read only, but since then they have introduced read/write support. Oracle Service Cloud also supports read/write in their implementation. When you create native objects, you can not only read from the OData end point but you can also write back to the OData source.
Question: Can you cite any OData use cases in the mobile space—iOS, Android or other?
Answer: Office 365 is a great example of a large service which wanted to make data more universally available. They aligned with OData as a REST API and were able to reach iOS and Android. They built an iOS and Android library that makes it more accessible and encapsulates some Office-specific semantics, but they are optional to use, you can consume them directly.
The other thing that works really well for mobile is JavaScript because almost any of those different platforms support JavaScript. And as I mentioned before there is an Olingo library for JavaScript for consuming OData version 4.0 services.
Question: How does OData play into the Internet of Things?
Answer: OData is useful for services that have interesting information behind them. For instance, Redfish is a great example of a management API with lots of data behind it. The Redfish specification uses OData to describe the current state of your disk drives, chassis, and other components that make up your data system. You can also query that system and send commands like reset or format and so forth through an OData-based REST API.
At one point, the team at Microsoft had something called the Internet Information Services (IIS) that was very OData-centric. It used OData to describe devices you were talking to and sent that data to do things such as turn lights on and off. It was interesting to use OData as a control the API for those individual devices, but it became much more interesting when the data from those devices was aggregated and placed in the cloud. Take thermostats for example; this enabled you to use OData to query information such as temperature, when the heat comes on, the weather that day, your calendar, or when you are home or away.
Question: When will the OData accelerator be available for Oracle Service Cloud?
Answer: February 2016 is the current target date for the OData Accelerator but Oracle doesn’t publish firm dates prior to the official release.
Put Your Knowledge to Use
Now that you have heard from some of the biggest experts in OData, you may be ready to try it yourself! We offer a simple way to OData-enable the leading enterprise and cloud data sources, allowing them to be accessed by the OData tool or application of your choice. This allows you bi-directional data access to leverage read and write support for OData entry points for any application or data source. Try DataDirect Cloud today and start harnessing the power of OData.
Continue reading...