Understanding OData

One of the most common uses of a web service is to expose a database to clients that do not know how to work directly with the native database, or cannot for security reasons. Another common use is to provide a simplified or abstracted API that exposes an authenticated interface to a subset of the data to control access.

In Chapter 1, Introducing Web Development Using Controllers, you created an EF Core model to expose an SQL Server database to any .NET project. But what about non-.NET projects? I know it's crazy to imagine, but not every developer uses .NET! Non-.NET developers cannot use our EF Core entity model class libraries.

Luckily, all development platforms support HTTP, so all development platforms can call web services, and ASP.NET Core has a package for making that easy and powerful using a standard named OData.

Understanding the OData standard

OData (Open Data Protocol) is an ISO/IEC-approved, OASIS standard that defines a set of best practices for...