Mar 29

Written by: Javier Callico
3/29/2010 

I stumbled upon this excellent article written by Scott Haselman: Creating an OData API for StackOverflow including XML and JSON in 30 minutes.

I, like many developers, spend so much time "handcrafting" my solutions that reading about how easy is to create an OData service using the new versions of .NET and Visual Studio was really refreshing and pleasantly surprising.

Scott claims that all it took to write his solution, including downloading the StackOverflow Monthly Dump, was 30 minutes. Let's make the safe assumption that there not many people in the industry with the knowledge and information Haselman has, and say that it takes 8 hours, only 8, still it's very impressive. Even the most demanding IT manager will be satisfied if served with such solution created in one business day (well maybe not Haselman).

Again, the solution is based on the new and improved version of Entity Framework, I'm not sure how long it will take and how easy WCF Data Services will integrate with another O/R mapper like Linq To SQL or NHibernate, since as he mentions one of the reasons for selecting EF for the article, and quote, is because: "WCF Data Services" (the data services formerly known as ADO.NET Data Services or "Astoria") maps nicely to EF".

I would definitely check this solution out in more detail later and keep it on top of my list if presented with the need of creating such data service.