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WCF Data Services October CTP Updates OData Libraries, Adds Spatial Data Types

Posted by Jenni Konrad on Oct 28, 2011

Sections: Development
Topics: .NET Framework 4.0 ,; WCF ,; .NET Framework ,; .NET ,; Programming ,; Silverlight

Microsoft has released the WCF Data Services October CTP, which targets .NET 4 and Silverlight 4. This update includes new libraries for OData version 3, and adds support for spatial data.

The October CTP includes a standalone library for accessing OData directly. As to why Microsoft is providing this independent of WCF Data Services, OData Team Program Manager Shayne Burgess explains:

If you want a great end-to-end solution for creating and exposing your data via an OData endpoint, then the WCF Data Services server library is (and will continue to be) the way to go. If you want a great OData Feed-consuming client with auxiliary support, like code generation and LINQ translation, then WCF Data Services’ client library is still your best bet. However, we also recognize that people are exploring creative possibilities with OData, and to help them build their own solutions from scratch we made the components we use as part of the WCF Data Services stack available as a stand-alone library.

The new OData v3 functionality includes the following:

multi-valued data types
'any' and 'all' operators
named resource streams for binary data
PATCH requests
'Prefer' header support
updates to feed customization
support for Entity Sets with different base URIs
new 'IncludeRelationshipLinksInResponse' property

The new spatial library adds 16 primitive spatial OData types, and the ability to perform operations on them in select, filter, and order by clauses. According to the WCF Data Services Team, these data types are supported by the Reflection or Custom Data Service Providers, but they are not yet available via the Entity Framework provider. That functionality will be added after the next release of the Entity Framework.

Actions and Vocabularies are also included in this CTP. Like the spatial data types, Actions are now available to custom data providers, but are not yet supported by the Entity Framework provider. Vocabularies provide a way to make metadata more expressive in an OData service; for an example of the implementation of Vocabularies and annotation, visit the WCF Data Services Team Blog.

The WCF Data Services October CTP is available from the Microsoft Download Center.