Add Spark to Your OData: Consuming Data Services in Excel 2010
OData is an open REST-ful protocol for exposing and consuming data on the web. Also known as Astoria, ADO.NET Data Services, now called WCF Data Services in .NET. I’ve written about it in the context of .NET many times on this blog. However there are SDKs available for other platforms like JavaScript and PHP.
With the release of .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1, .NET developers could easily create and expose data models on the web via REST. The simplicity of the service, along with the ease of developing it, make it very attractive for CRUD-style data-based applications to use as a service layer to their data. Check out some of the articles I’ve written before on OData. If you’re just getting started, I’d suggest reading Using ADO.NET Data Services first.