This is a series of blogs detailing my introduction to using OData v4 with C# and ASP.NET WebApi.
OData is a protocol and libraries like ASP.NET WebApi implement part or all of the protocol. You can view the current v4 protocol documentation here. http://docs.oasis-open.org/odata/odata/v4.0/odata-v4.0-part1-protocol.html
What is the Entity Data Model
At the heart of OData is the Entity Data Model (EDM) which describes what OData Services are available to the clients. We can build a model using C# classes and methods and expose that model using the Common Schema Definition Language (CSDL).
This is defined in XML and you can view the complete standard here. http://docs.oasis-open.org/odata/odata/v4.0/odata-v4.0-part3-csdl.html
Note. Not all of the CSDL is implemented in Microsoft’s WebApi implementation. As releases come out, you need to read the release notes to see what new features have been added. You can view the release notes here. https://github.com/OData/WebApi/releases
Future blogs will expose more of the EDM as different aspects are discussed.
In the next blog I will discuss the OData Service Document.
Denham Coder 