OData
Open Data Protocol (v4)
Judgement: Situational
Pick when you live in the Microsoft BI/Dynamics world.
Standardised protocol for building and consuming RESTful data APIs. Defines URL conventions, query syntax (filter, select, expand, orderby, pagination), and a metadata model (CSDL) so clients can discover schema and capabilities programmatically.
Heavily used inside Microsoft (Dynamics 365, Power BI, Microsoft Graph), SAP (S/4HANA, OData services), Salesforce, and Oracle Fusion. Where OpenAPI describes any REST surface, OData prescribes a uniform shape so consumers don't have to learn each API individually.
Why it counts as a standard
OData is an OASIS Standard with a publicly-defined wire protocol and metadata format (CSDL). Multiple independent implementations exist across Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, and the OData4j / Olingo open-source stacks, so "speaks OData" is a portability claim rather than a vendor-lock-in label.
At a glance
- Category
- Contracts
- Governance
- OASIS (originally Microsoft)
- Status
- Stable; v4.01 current (OASIS Standard since 2014)
- First released
- 2014
Links
Related standards
Other standards in Contracts.
- AsyncAPI — AsyncAPI Specification
- GraphQL
- ODCS — Open Data Contract Standard
- OpenAPI — OpenAPI Specification
- gRPC — gRPC Remote Procedure Call
See OData in context
Open the interactive Data Landscape to compare OData against every other open standard, or grab the raw JSON. Spotted something wrong? Open an issue.