OData Server architecture

The OData Server consists of the following components:

The OData Producer The OData Producer is a Java Servlet that uses the JDBC API to connect to a SQL Anywhere database server. The OData Producer processes OData requests and responses and interfaces with the database.

The following table illustrates how the 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 the OData Producer.

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

OData client requests are sent to an HTTP server through URIs and are processed by the 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.

You can grant client access to the database using either a pre-configured connection string or Basic HTTP authentication.

OData Server architecture

See also