Products Leveraging OData Services

Open Data Protocol (OData) Web services enable developers to expose their data sources in a consistent manner so clients can access the data without requiring a predefined schema. Several Microsoft products provide features that either publish data through OData services or consume data from OData services, including the following:

Azure Marketplace, Microsoft’s hosting platform for selling and purchasing data, uses OData services to publish data sets.

Azure SQL Database, a Microsoft-hosted, multitenant database service, provides an optional OData service for customers to provide access to their databases.

Azure Table Storage, a storage as a service offering in Azure, uses an OData service for storage and access; however, the service requires an account key (for authentication) and may require extra steps to work with some OData clients.

Dynamics CRM, an on-premises and online product that helps workers manage marketing, sales, and customer service processes, publishes data through OData services for Microsoft’s CRM tablet applications, and the OData services are accessible by other clients.