Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Understanding the OData Protocol
The OData protocol is a fairly extensive protocol and exposes a wide range of capabil-
ities. This section describes the key features of the OData protocol that an SSIS deve-
loper should be aware of. If you are interested in learning more about the protocol, the
Note
The SSIS OData Source for SQL Server 2012 and 2014 supports version 3 of
the OData protocol, and not version 4. More information about the OData protocol can
There are two main features of OData from an SSIS perspective: the metadata doc-
ument and the data you get back from accessing an OData resource.
The metadata document is an EDM description of the OData service that describes
the entity sets exposed by the service. The SSIS OData Source uses the metadata docu-
ment to figure out the schema of the source data. This document is located at a standard
a mapping of OData and EDM concepts.
Table 12-1
.
OData v3 Concepts Mapped to Relational Terms
OData
Relational
Comments
Entity set
Table or
view
Entity sets
(also known as collections or feeds) define the objects
you'll be receiving in SSIS. When using the Collection mode, the
OData Source provides a drop-down box allowing you to select
one of the entity sets defined by the service.
Entity
Row of
data
Defines the schema for the rows of data within an entity set.
Operation
Stored pro-
cedure or
function
The OData Source UI does not expose a way to select operations,
but it is possible to invoke an operation by specifying its resource
path.
Navigation
property
Foreign
key rela-
tionship
Navigation properties define relationships between entities. The
OData Source does not support these directly, but you can access
subentities by entering their resource path.
At runtime, SSIS retrieves data from the OData service using standard HTTP
URLs. That means you can see the same data being returned to SSIS by entering the
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