LINQ to OData Services



LINQ offers versatile querying capabilities within the .NET Framework (v3.0+), offering a straightforward method for programmatic data access through CData ADO.NET Data Providers. In this article, we demonstrate the use of LINQ to retrieve information from the OData Data Provider.

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the OData via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for OData. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

About OData Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live OData services data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Access OData versions 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0, working with legacy services and the latest features and capabilities.
  • Leverage advanced query options, including $filter, $select, and $expand, enhancing data retrieval from 3rd party tools.
  • Use Server-side execution of aggregation and grouping to minimize data transfer and boost performance.
  • Authenticate securely using a variety of schemes, including Azure AD, digest, negotiate, NTLM, OAuth, and more means secure authentication with every connection.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to manage OData service entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

Customers use CData's solutions to regularly integrate their OData services with preferred tools, such as Power BI, MicroStrategy, or Tableau, and to replicate data from OData services to their databases or data warehouses.


Getting Started


See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

  1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
  2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
  3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData OData Data Source".
  4. Enter your data source connection information.

    The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid OData user credentials. In addition, you will need to specify a URL to a valid OData server organization root or OData services file.

    Below is a typical connection string:

    URL=http://services.odata.org/V4/Northwind/Northwind.svc;UseIdUrl=True;OData Version=4.0;Data Format=ATOM;
  5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting ODataEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
  6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:

ODataEntities context = new ODataEntities(); var ordersQuery = from orders in context.Orders select orders; foreach (var result in ordersQuery) { Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.OrderName); }

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.

Ready to get started?

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Easy-to-use OData client (consumer) enables developers to build .NET applications that easily communicate with OData services.