If you are in SAP then you must have realized that in recent days the term OData is getting a lot of attention, O Data In Sap
During my normal project work, I got introduced to this term in an ESS-MSS Project I was working on. That time all I heard was that OData is a protocol which SAP is adopting for its future web applications.
This made me wonder why is SAP adopting a new protocol for data access. I had already heard and worked on some web applications using the REST protocol. This made me curious and I started reading heavily on OData Protocol.
If you are curious enough like I was to learn about this protocol and what it is about I hope this post helps you.
When I first started working in SAP, I started with SAP-Scripts. Then SAP upgraded and a new thing called Smartforms was introduced. After some years I heard of ADOBE forms. And further on I started working on Interactive ADOBE Forms.
So being in SAP by now I had adapted myself to the thought that as technology improves new buzzwords will always keep coming up in SAP. Therefore when I first heard the term OData. I immediately assumed that this also must be a new development tool SAP has come up with. But later on, someone said OData is not a new development tool but a data transfer technique.
Ok, data-transfer hmm…. So this must be like ALE-IDOC then, another way to transfer data… Nice!!
But as I further started digging around, I learnt that Odata is not a development tool at all.
It is actually a PROTOCOL for data transfer and it is not owned or developed by SAP. But it has existed way before SAP adopted it. It was actually created by Microsoft and has been used by it and many others for multiple applications.
But this definition was a bit heavy right now to understand and I needed to break it down further to make it clear. So let’s start from some basics.
OData is used to define best practices that are required to build and consume RESTful APIs. … REST stands for Representational State Transfer and it is sometimes spelt as “ReST”. It relies on a stateless, client-server, cacheable communication protocol. In virtually all cases, the HTTP protocol is used.
By exposing SAP Business Suite functionality as REST-based OData (Open Data Protocol) services, SAP Gateway enables SAP applications to share data with a wide range of devices, technologies, and platforms in a way that is easy to understand and consume.
Using REST services provides the following advantages:
- Obtain human-readable results; you can use your browser to see what data you will get.
- Use stateless applications
- Receive related pieces of information, one leading to another.
- Use standard GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, and QUERY. If you know where to GET data, you know where to PUT it, and you can use the same format.
What Is OData and Why Do We Use It?
OData is a Web protocol for querying and updating data, applying and building on Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub), and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to provide access to information from a variety of applications. It is easy to understand and extensible and provides consumers with a predictable interface for querying a variety of data sources.
AtomPub is the standard for treating groups of similar information snippets as it is simple, extensible, and allows anything textual in its content. However, as so much textual enterprise data is structured, there is also a requirement to express what structure to expect in a certain kind of information snippet. As these snippets can come in large quantities, they must be trimmed down to manageable chunks, sorted according to ad-hoc user preferences, and the result set must be stepped through page by page.
OData provides all of the above as well as additional features, such as feed customization that allows mapping part of the structured content into the standard Atom elements, and the ability to link data entities within an OData service (via “…related…” links) and beyond (via media link entries). This facilitates support of a wide range of clients with different capabilities:
- Purely Atom, simply paging through data.
- Hypermedia-driven, navigating through the data web.
- Aware of query options, tailoring the OData services to their needs.
OData is also extensible, like the underlying AtomPub, and thereby allows the addition of features that are required when building easy-to-use applications, both mobile and browser-based.
SAP Gateway uses OData for SAP Products, which contains SAP-specific metadata that helps the developer to consume SAP business data, such as descriptions of fields that can be retrieved from the SAP ABAP Dictionary. The following are examples of OData for SAP applications:
- Human-readable, language-dependent labels for all properties (required for building user interfaces).
- Free-text search, within collections of similar entities, and across collections using OpenSearch. OpenSearch can use the Atom Syndication Format for its search results, so the OData entities that are returned by the search fit in, and OpenSearch can be integrated into AtomPub service documents via links with rel=”search”, per collection as well as on the top level. The OpenSearch description specifies the URL template to use for searching, and for collections it simply points to the OData entity set, using a custom query option with the name of “search”.
- Semantic annotations, which are required for applications running on mobile devices to provide seamless integration into contacts, calendar, and telephony. The client needs to know which OData properties contain a phone number, a part of a name or address, or something related to a calendar event.
- Not all entities and entity sets will support the full spectrum of possible interactions defined by the uniform interface, so capability discovery will help clients avoiding requests that the server cannot fulfil. The metadata document will tell whether an entity set is searchable, which properties may be used in filter expressions, and which properties of an entity will always be managed by the server.
- Most of the applications for “light-weight consumption” follow an interaction pattern called “view-inspect-act”, “alert-analyze-act”, or “explore & act”, meaning that you somehow navigate (or are led) to an entity that interests you, and then you have to choose what to do. The chosen action eventually results in changes to this entity, or entities related to it, but it may be tricky to express it in terms of an Update operation, so the available actions are advertised to the client as special atom links (with an optional embedded simplified “form” in case the action needs parameters) and the action is triggered by POSTing to the target URI of the link.
Target Audience:
Sometimes I read a blog only to realize later that the blog was not meant for me. So Let me clarify that this blog post will be most useful to you if you are in SAP, mostly in the Technical/Development domain.
Also if you deal in the Core SAP ABAP Development area like Report Programming, BDC, Call Transactions, BAPI’s etc and if you move into newer development technologies of SAP like SAPUI5, Fiori etc then you may find value in this blog.
Before you can learn about OData protocol let’s understand what is the meaning of protocol. OK!!
The dictionary definition of the protocol is
pro·to·col
— Boring definition as always — Now you might find this definition to be too formal to understand but the idea is simple.
A protocol is a set of rules by which official procedures are conducted.
Let me explain this in much simpler terms.
Let say you visit a Hindu temple. The first thing you would do is you take off your footwear i.e your sandals or shoes. Then you climb the temple steps. Then you ring the temple bell and finally, then you enter the temple door. This is a standard procedure to be followed by any devotee entering a temple. That means this is the accepted protocol to enter a temple.
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