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Anubhav Pandey
February 8, 2016 4 minute read

OData – Everything that you need to know (Part 1)

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Introduction

This series of blogs is an attempt to provide a comprehensive guide to OData and how it is consumed in the
SAP world. There has been a lot of content on the Internet explaining what is OData, how the services and
published and how to consume which is scattered and assumes that the reader has clarity already on some
very important fundamentals. However, there are so many aspects which deserves more than just a mention.
In this blog, we will try and cover the topic 360 degrees.

We start with the very basics of HTTP and then gradually build on to OData and finally conclude with a detailed
end-to-end exercise on how to create an OData service and how to consume it.

How Internet Works?

It might sound to be an unrelated topic when the focus is on OData. HTTP is the common thread between the
two. HTTP is the underlying protocol on which OData is based and also one of the most common language
which is spoken on the Internet.

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You would typically need a Web Browser, address of the document you want to read or the URL (Uniform
Resource Locator), a Web Server running at the system where the document is located.

Web Browser is a software which is responsible to retrieving and presenting resources on the web. Web
Browser parses the HTML response received from the Web and prepares a DOM Tree. DOM stands for
Document Object Model and it is a language-independent convention of representing objects in HTML. Web
Browser acts as an interface between you and the World Wide Web.

You can request for a document located somewhere on this planet by providing its address via the browser
which sends HTTP requests to the web server. The Web server then sends back HTTP response that is
parsed by the Web Browser for you to view the document on your machine.

HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and as the name suggest it defines the semantics of what the
browser and the web server can communicate to each other. The how part of the communication or the byte by
byte transfer of the data packets across the network is not HTTP but it is done via TCP/IP protocols.

An important component in the story so far is also the Web Server. In a nutshell, Web Server is a server
program which sits on a physical server and waits for requests from a client. Whenever a request is received
the Web Server prepares a response and sends it back to the client using HTTP protocol. It is important to
note that HTTP is not the only but, by far most commonly used protocol and that the client here can be a
browser or any other software that communicates in HTTP.

Let us now try and put up a formal definition to the HTTP.

“HTTP is based on a Client-Server architecture style and it uses a stateless request/response protocol to
communicate between the client and the web server. The HTTP protocol helps define what requests can be
sent across by the client and response sent by web server. The communication of data over the network is
however done using on TCP/IP protocol”.

It is evident that HTTP is based on client server architecture from our description till now, browser being the
client which sends HTTP request and web server which sends the response back to the browser. But, why
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stateless?

Every single HTTP request that is received by the web server is forgotten after a response has been sent
across. Web servers do not process an HTTP request by remembering the previous request.

URI and URL are not the same thing

We mentioned a while back that you need to know the URL of the document you wish to view in your browser.
Can I not mention a URI as an address to get the document on the web? Let us quickly understand the
difference between the two.

URI or the Uniform Resource Identifier can be classified as a name, locator or both that identifies a resource
uniquely.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is actually a subset of URI that not only identifies a resource uniquely but
also provide means of locating the resource.

Defining the Request and Response

HTTP requests are sent with one of the defined Request Method that indicates the action to be taken on the
resource. Following are the two most commonly used methods:

GET

This is used to retrieve information of the resource from the server.

POST

This method is usedto send data to the server.

For example, if you enter a text string on Google search page and press enter, it will generate an HTTP
Request with GET method in the background. On the other hand, if you provide your username/password on a
Login page and press enter a POST HTTP request will be send to the server.

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HTTP Response from the Web Server comes with data and the status code. The status code provides a
context to the response. For instance, if you do not correctly provide the resource location, the web browser
will send you a response which you are not expecting. Along with the data response comes the status code,
known universally in the HTTP world, that explains to the user what could be the reason for an unexpected
response.

HTTP codes are 3 digit integers.

Code and Description

1xx: Informational

It means the request has been received and the process is continuing.

2xx: Success

It means the action was successfully received, understood, and accepted.

3xx: Redirection

It means further action must be taken in order to complete the request.

4xx: Client Error

It means the request contains incorrect syntax or cannot be fulfilled.

5xx: Server Error

It means the server failed to fulfill an apparently valid request.

For example, status code 400 means Bad Request. It means that the server did not understand the request.

OData allow creation and consumption of RESTful APIs. In the next blog, I will cover what are RESTful APIs
as the next stepping stone towards understanding OData.

Next Blog: OData – Everything that you need to know (Part 2)

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16 Comments

Miguel Peredo Zurcher

February 9, 2016 at 7:25 pm

Great blog entry! Here’s some practical approach to bex queries and OData: BEx queries and OData in BW 7.4

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Ashok Babu Kumili

February 10, 2016 at 10:53 am

Hi Anubhav,

Perfect document to understand the concepts of  “Odata”. Very nicely written article. I’d a great learning. It has
been summarized very nicely…

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Anubhav Pandey | Post author

February 10, 2016 at 11:23 am

Thanks Ashok. This is encouraging. Blog is still work in progress on the end-to-end steps to create OData
service in system.

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Anubhav Pandey | Post author

March 1, 2016 at 4:42 am

Hi All,

I have added few more blogs to this series to demonstrate building an OData service.

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Ashok Babu Kumili

March 1, 2016 at 8:14 am

Great thanks Anubhav… .. . .

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Former Member

March 25, 2016 at 12:12 pm

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very well done

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Former Member

April 23, 2016 at 2:13 am

Great Explanation. Looking forward for next parts. 

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Former Member

April 2, 2017 at 8:27 am

Nice blog

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saket amraotkar

January 12, 2018 at 10:53 am

Nice Anubhav!!!

Means you are giving nice Anubhav i.e. experience.

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Aravinth Anandhan

March 12, 2018 at 10:37 am

Very Nice ! Such a simple and detailed explanation. Thanks for posting

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Manjunatha Nagaraj

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April 17, 2018 at 11:01 am

Wonderful blog….it takes deep know-how to present it in such a fashion. It answered several of my basic
questions….things like understanding error codes,etc.

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Michael James Dugay

October 4, 2018 at 12:00 pm

Really great series.. This introduction in the SAP context is what is sorely lacking in the resources I’ve seen so
far.. Please continue to create blogs on this topic. Thanks

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Anubhav Pandey | Post author

October 8, 2018 at 4:37 am

Thanks Michael. I will surely work on this sometime soon.

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Sumit Naik

November 21, 2018 at 7:20 pm

Thanks Anubhav, great information!

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Niladri Bihari Nayak

September 3, 2019 at 1:22 am

Thanks Anubhav

I have been redirected to your blog from current opensAP course week2

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https://open.sap.com/courses/mobile3 It’s very well narrated .

Kudos !

Regards,

Niladri

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Anubhav Pandey | Post author

September 3, 2019 at 4:33 am

Thanks!

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