Windows Azure Mobile Services

Abstract

Since the release of the first edition of this book 2010 the SQL Azure OData service has been removed. That’s not a bad thing. OData is still around, and you can still prop up a WCF data service and communicate via the OData protocol. In fact, if you use WCF Data Services, you might very well be using OData. WCF Data Services supports the OData protocol, which allows you to expose your data as a feed with resources that are addressable by URIs. OData allows you to expose data from a variety of sources, ranging from Microsoft Excel to websites, not just relational databases. Creating a data service that exposes an OData feed really boils down to three simple and basic steps:

• Define the model: WCF Data Services natively supports models that are based on the ADO. NET Entity Framework.

• Create the data service: Define a data service which exposes a class that inherits from the DataService class.

• Configure the data service: Configure access to resources (such as tables) and service operations, and define service-wide behavior. WCF Data Services disables access to resources that are exposed by the entity container by default.