8.7. Client Tools for Access

Your Browser: The OData Explorer is an online tool for browsing an OData data service.

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.51: the WCF Data Services framework is available as a separate download for .NET 3.x.

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0: the WCF Data Services framework built into .NET 4.0.

Silverlight 3: the Data Services client library for Silverlight is available for download.

Java: the Restlet 2.0 library for Java (including Java on your Android phone) supports the OData protocol.

Java: Use a library like OData4J for Java based access, or any Rest based framework

JavaScript: the XMLHttpRequest object is standard in modern browsers or you can use jQuery, which comes out of the box with .NET 4.0 or is available for download.

PHP: the Toolkit for PHPprovides OData support for PHP clients.

AJAX: if you're using AJAX for ASP.NET, Microsoft provides the ASP.NET Ajax Library for getting to OData.

Excel 2010 PowerPivot: PowerPivot comes with OData support built right in.

Windows Desktop: LINQPad is a good tool for building OData queries interactively but it has some limitations: firstly, it is not able to handle FunctionImports (procedures). If the model contains only procedures, no tables then also it acts error. Secondly, it does not work with multiple schema, as it does not show all the schemas, only the default one. Since no default schema is set in the VDB's $metadata, it finds the first one and uses it. OData V2 does allow multiple Schemas and multiple EntityContainers in a single $metadata so it appears that LINQPad is not yet fully compliant with this specification.

Shell Scripts: use CURL tool