OData

[Doug Orange]

Hi. I'm working for an organisation that is starting out on its API journey. We use SAP and Microsoft technologies (amongst many, many others) so OData is a topic that comes up when discussing API design and implementation.

Are many people using OData when implementing APIs? Should we invest in OData or does it not have enough traction?

Thanks - Doug

[MattM]

Hi Doug,

It will make sense to gain some fluency in OData in order to interoperate with your SAP and Microsoft platforms, but I would stop there. I've witnessed a large enterprise attempt to standardize on OData and it was not pretty. OData promotes tight coupling to the data model on back end platforms, and often includes superfluous information. This creates a burden for your API clients. You may want to create an OData "Anti-Corruption Layer" to minimize that damage.

Thanks, m@

[Eric Johnson]

Indeed, to echo that reply, when I evaluated OData, I concluded that it possibly set out some useful patterns, but fully implementing the specification looked like it would inevitably tie the representation in the UI to a database model that exactly corresponded, unless you did a lot of heavy lifting to avoid that coupling.

As near as I can tell, best approach might be to implement Swagger / OpenAPI.

Eric.