Introduction to WCF Data service and

ODATA
Creating WCF Data Service
Consuming WCF Data Service
WCF Data Service, Project Astoria, OData and ADO.Net Data Service are same
thing.

What is ODATA?

ODATA is HTTP or web protocol to querying or manipulating data.

ODATA uses HTTP, JOSN or ATOM.

ODATA can be implemented through any platform supports, HTTP, XML or JSON.

ODATA can expose data/information from relational database, File systems, Web
sites, services etc.

ODATA specification available under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP)

so third parties, including open source projects, can build Open Data Protocol
clients and services.

What is WCF Data Service?

WCF Data service framework provides an API that allows data to be created and
consumed over HTTP using RESTful service.
WCF Data service supports all database operations using URI.

WCF Data service can expose an entity model via an URI.

WCF Data service is RESTful service to support CRUD operations on database.

WCF Data service could be consumed by any type of client like Windows,
SilverLight, Web, AJAX and console.

Block diagram explaining working of WCF Data Service

1. Create a Data Access layer using ADO.Net Entity model or LINQ.

2. Make sure Data model is implementing IQueryable and IUpdateable .
3. Expose the data model as REST service using WCF Data service.
CRUD Operations and HTTP verb

Supported Message Format

Sample on WCF Data Service

Let us say, we have a table called Student of below structure below in our database

In Student table RollNumber is a primary key.

Let us create WCF Data Service which will expose the above table as REST service
Step 1: Create a Web Application
Create a new project and select ASP.Net Web Application project template from Web tab.
Give a meaning full name to the web application.

Step 2: Create a Data Model

We can create a Data Model, which can be exposed as WCF Data Service in three ways
1. Using ADO.Net Entity model.
2. Using LINQ to SQL class.
3. Custom Data Model.
For our purpose, I am going to use ADO.Net Entity model to create the data model. So to
create an entity model
1. Right click on web application and add a new item

2. Select ADO.Net Entity model from Data tab.

3. Since we have table in data base. so we are going to choose option , select from
database.

4. Either choose the data base from drop down or create a new data connection.

In above connection string StudentDBEntities is name of the connection string. If

we want, we can change this connection string as per our requirement. If your
required data base is not listed in drop down then, you can create a new data
connection. To create new data connection click on New Connection.

You can give the data base server name and press refresh. After pressing Refresh,
you can choose the data base from the drop down. After selecting the data base
click on Test Connection to test connection established successfully or not?
5. Select tables, views and stored procedure from data base you want to make as
the part of your data model. Since we are having only one table so we are
selecting one table.

If you want you can change name of the data model. By default it is name of the
data base appended by the term model. Click on Finish button to complete and
create the data model.
6. Now we can see that StudentDataModel.edmx has been created in the designer.

Since there is only one table, so there is only one table model at design surface.

Now we have created the data model which can be exposed as WCF Data Service.
Now you can see in solution explorer, you have StudentModel.edmx and
StdentModel.Designer.cs files.

Step 3: Creating WCF Data Service

1. Right click on Web Application project and add a new item.
2. Select WCF Data Service from Web tab. Give any meaningful name. I am leaving
the default name here.

3. After adding the WCF Data Service, we can see a service file with extension .svc
has been added to the solution explorer. When we click on .svc.cs file, we can see
the code generated for us.

Very first we need to put data source name. To do so uncomment the first
commented line and put the data source name. In our case name of the model,
which we created in 2nd step is the data source. Our data source name is
StudentDBEntities

Now we need to set access rules for entity or entity set. Since we have only one
table, so either we can give name of the table explicitly or if we want to set the
same access rule for all the table in the data model or data source we could put
*.

So we are setting the access rule that, on the entity in data source perform all the
operations.
Step 4: Run the WCF Data Service
Just press F5 to run the WCF Data Service. Data Service will be hosted in the default
ASP.Net server called Cassini.
On running you can see, one table is listed. That table is Student

The above is the data in ATOM message format.

Note: If your browser is not showing the expected result, make sure Feed reading of
browser is off. To do from menu of IE and select tool and then Internet Option then
Content

MetaData
One feature of WCF data service is that, they provide operation to retrieve
Metadata about the service and offer of the service.
This is very useful in determining structure before requesting them.

WCF Data service provides metadata accessible.

Metadata expose all the resource and custom services.

Metadata could be accessed by appending $metadata to service URI.

So, the URI to access metadata is

http://localhost:29409/WcfDataService1.svc/$metadata

URI Query options

We can perform various queries in the browser itself using the URI query options.
Options
Options Descriptions
expand Request set of related entities to be retrieved.
orderby Indicates the sequence entity to be retrieved
skip

Skip number of data items.

top

At most returns top number of data items

filter

Applies the filtering condition

Operators
Options

Descriptions

eq

Equal

ne

Not Equal

gt

Greater Than

ge

Greate than or equal to

lt

Less than

le

Less than or equal to

and

Logical AND

or

Logical OR

not

Logical NOT

Math Operators
Operators

Descriptions

add

add

sub

Subtract

mul

multiply

div

Division

mod

remainder

Various queries
1. Fetch all the records from the table Student
URI: http://localhost:29409/WcfDataService1.svc/Students
Result

2. Fetch the student details with roll number 1

URI: http://localhost:29409/WcfDataService1.svc/Students?$filter=RollNumber
eq'1'

3. Fetch top 2 record from the student table

URI: http://localhost:29409/WcfDataService1.svc/Students?$top =2

4. Fetch the records of the student with roll number 1 or 3

URI: http://localhost:29409/WcfDataService1.svc/Students?($filter=RollNumber
eq'1')or($filter=rollnumber eq '3')

Different Access rules on the entity set

Enumerator

Descriptions

All

All Read and Write are permitted

AllRead

All Read permitted

AllWrite

All Write is permitted

None

No access is permitted

ReadMultiple

Reading multiple row is permitted

ReadSingle

Reading a single row is permitted

WriteAppend

Creating New data is permitted

WriteDelete

Deleting data is permitted

WriteMerge

Merge updating is permitted

WriteReplace

Replace updating is permitted

As we discussed above we can set access rule for a particular entity or whole entity set in
data source.
config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.All);
This will permit all right access on all entity set.
config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("Students", EntitySetRights.AllWrite);
This will permit all write access on Student entity set.
Creating a client to consume WCF Data Service
Step 1
Add a new project in the same solution of type console application.

Step 2
Add the service reference of WCF Data Service. To add right click on the console project
and add a service reference. Since WCF Data Service and client project in the same
solution , click on Discover to discover the service in the solution.

Add the reference of System.Data.Service.Client in client project also.

Step 3

Add namespaces

Step 4
Need to create instance of DataContext and StudentDBEntities. These two classes take
as parameter in their constructor. Parameter is base URI of the WCF Data Service.

Retrieving all the records of table Students

Adding one record in the table Student

Updating a record in the table Student

Delete a record in the table Student