It's been a little over a week since the new OData.org went live, and in that time we've had plenty of interesting feedback.
Thank you!
Here are some of the suggestions we've received:
- Open Source the .NET Server libraries too (we announced and will release the .NET client libraries under apache soon). For more information read Miguel's post where he makes his case.
- Better guidance on how to integrate various Authentication schemes with OData. Alex Hudson's post argues strongly for more help in this area. We hear this particular feedback loud and clear, and are working to create some guidance.
- Figure out how to use OData to supplement or replace the MetaWeblog API most blog engines use - Sounds like an interesting way to extend the reach of OData.
- Binary version of the protocol. Mainly for perf/compression reasons - let's face it XML isn't exactly terse. We have been thinking about this, and have started considering things like Binary XML.
- Create a VBA client library so you can easily process OData inside Office applications.
- Make it easy to download an OData feed into Excel - not via PowerPivot - directly into Excel.
- Create some guidance showing how to mock the .NET client library.
- Add OData support to more Microsoft products like the Dynamics family of products.
- Work out exactly how OData works with and complements other linked data standards like RDF, OWL and SPARQL.
- Create an OData wiki. Actually this is something we are already working towards.
- Adopt a more open licensing model. Perhaps using Creative Commons Public Domain?
- Consider working with W3C, IETF or OWF to standardize all the OData specifications.
- Add an about page to the site, so we can find out about the people and companies currently funding working on OData.
What do you think about these suggestions?
Do you have any of your own?
And in other developments:
- Chris Woody Woodruff, of Deep Fried Bytes fame, has started an OData wiki on odataprimer.com.
- Andrew Lang, a professor at Drexel University, told us about their real-time solubility data as OData.
- The Dallas team posted The Data Grail, a very exciting post about using Tableau and Dallas together to visualize an OData feed.
- Brian Swan put together a post on the abc's of OData via PHP.
While we work to add an OData mailing list and get a wiki up and running we'll write more summary posts like this.
So keep the feedback coming, as you can see we are listening.
Alex James
Microsoft