WCF Data Services and ASP.NET Web API

Question

ASP.NET Web API is being advertised as "an ideal platform for building RESTful applications on the .NET Framework". It replaces WCF REST and WCF Web API.

Interestingly, although the OData format has been promoted by Microsoft to "enable a new level of data integration and interoperability across a broad range of clients, servers, services, and tools", the new, consolidated tooling for developing HTTP services doesn't come with support for this standard except for incomplete support for filter parameters.

This development leaves solution architects wondering what is the message Microsoft is delivering. Especially, what are the use cases for WCF Data Services in the light of the introduction of ASP.NET Web API. Also, what is the relevance of the OData format for  the web team at Microsoft.

I think it would be very timely some guidance on whether customers should keep investing in OData and WCF Data Services or start migrating to ASP.NET Web API; also shedding some light on expected roadmaps, for instance whether ASP.NET Web API will support OData or if WCF Data Services will be incorporated into ASP.NET Web API or maybe rebuilt as a layer over it.

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Fernando Correia
pensandoazure.wordpress.com
@facorreia

Answer 1

According to the roadmap, entity framework scaffolding is on the list for the final release. Not sure what that means, but my guess is that they'll have a way to generate a web API that exposes data from EF.

Answer 2

@SleepyDaddySoftware, that's right, and that's why I'm trying to understand Microsoft's vision for OData and WCF Data Services in the light of the new developments on ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Single Page Applications.

For instance, the new DbDataController class exposes Entity Framework models as HTTP services. These services have a great feature overlap with WCF Data Services, such as CRUD support, metadata and request batching. They even partially mimic OData's query string format.

But these services follow the RPC style; they're not RESTful and they don't use OData. Considering the evolution of WCF REST and WCF Web API to ASP.NET Web API, the new features of ASP.NET Web API and what seems to be effectively an alternative to WCF Data Services, I think a clarification is necessary on where WCF Data Services and the OData protocol fit in the Microsoft stack.

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Fernando Correia
pensandoazure.wordpress.com
@facorreia

Answer 3

Well, according to the roadmap, OData formatters are also on the ToDo list, though it seems these will be added after release in a NuGet update. Perhaps then we'll know more what that entails with regards to OData support. The way I see Web API fitting into the big picture is that they are providing a framework to do arbitrary web services over http. These don't necessarily have to be RESTfull services, and they can be in any format (SOAP, ATOM, XML, JSON, OData-JSON, etc...). OData would then be one of many possible standards/formats that could be hosted as an ASP.NET Web API service. The problem appears to be in the fact that the Web API doesn't support the full OData query URI standard, is that correct? May I ask what parts of the query standard it doesn't support, because I remember not even WCF Data Services supported everything in the spec. And, I haven't seen anything in the documentation that indicates that it's not MEANT to be a full OData query implementation, or specifically what parts are not yet supported. Perhaps full support is planned, but not yet implemented?

Answer 4

Hi, I just came across this article. Even though it doesn't talk about OData it discusses WCF vs. ASP.NET Web APIs

WCF or ASP.NET Web APIs

-Julia

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Answer 5

this thread also discussing the same

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/adodotnetdataservices/thread/ef35e3aa-65dd-4af7-b7c7-6e84573514cf