OData Explorer

OData Explorer

One nice tool to use with OData is the
OData Explorer. The OData Explorer
is a tool that helps to explore OData feeds
in a visual way and not by exploring the
Atom/JSON responses. You can download
the tool from here. Another way to use the
tool is by going to the following link:
http://Silverlight.net/ODataExplorer.

OData Explorer Requirements

The tool is a Silverlight 4 project.
In order to use it you’ll have to answer these requirements:

• Visual Studio 2010
• Silverlight 4 Developer runtime
• Silverlight 4 SDK
• Silverlight 4 tools for Visual Studio
• Latest Silverlight Toolkit release for Silverlight 4

or of course use it on-line in the link I provided previously.

Using the Tool

When the tool start you’ll get to the Add New OData Workspace view:


Here you can address your feed or address public OData feeds.
After choosing the workspace you’ll get into the tool:
 

Now you can go over the collections (entity sets) and get their information
in grid representation (which can be edited if the service is updatable):


or in row data (Atom/JSON):


You can type your own queries in the upper text box or you can
use the Build Query view to create a query:

Summary

The OData Explorer is very useful tool when you want to
understand and look at OData feeds without understanding the
protocol. It comes with very nice features and can be very handy
in presenting your feeds.