OData Server architecture

The OData Server consists of OData Producers and an HTTP server.

OData Producers OData Producers are Java Servlets that use the JDBC API to connect to database servers. An OData Producer processes OData requests and interfaces with the database.

The following table illustrates how an OData Producer maps OData concepts to relational database concepts:

OData concept	Database equivalent
Entity type	Table or view
Entity type instance	Row
Key	Primary key
Link	Foreign key
Property	Column

An HTTP server An HTTP server handles OData requests from web clients.
The OData Server uses the Jetty WebServer as its HTTP server. This embedded HTTP server also acts as a Java Servlet container, which is required to host OData Producers.

Your own HTTP server can be used to handle OData requests as an alternative to the embedded HTTP server provided that your solution can also host Java Servlets. For example, an IIS or Apache server can be set up to forward requests to a Tomcat server.

OData client requests are sent to an HTTP server through URIs and are processed by an OData Producer, which then interfaces with the database server to issue database requests and retrieve content for the OData responses.

The OData schema for each client is based on the client's database connection permissions. Clients are not able to view or modify database objects that they do not have permission to view.

Client access to the database can be granted by using either a pre-configured connection string or Basic HTTP authentication.

OData Server architecture

See also