OData integration

Dynamicweb allows for data integration through the Open Data Protocol (OData), which is a standardized way of communicating with RESTful API's.

Through the OData protocol you can use HTTP methods such as GET or POST on endpoints and you can filter the response or select specific fields. 

By utilizing the built in Endpoint provider and OData provider (pre v. 0.2.25) you can set up data integration activities for importing data from any interface that exposes OData web services as well as for exporting data to Dynamics 365 Business Central.

There are five general steps in configuring an OData integration in Dynamicweb:

• Authenticating access to an OData source 
• Establishing endpoints in Dynamicweb
• Configuring a source provider
• Configuring a destination provider
• Defining mappings between Dynamicweb and the OData source/destination 

The OData Provider is a purpose-built provider. It must be paired with an Endpoint Provider. Currently the only officially supported OData endpoints originate from Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365BC).

The OData Provider uses a set of object types. These object types contain predefined mappings between specific entities in D365BC and specific tables in Dynamicweb. Check out the OData v4 object type documentation for a comprehensive overview.

In addition the preconfigured object types the OData provider has an object type called "Custom". Use this when a source endpoint is custom or does not have a matching object type. When object type Custom is used, then OData Provider delegates to Dynamicweb Provider which in turn can expose all Dynamicweb tables.

Check out the how-to guide on using the OData - and endpoint providers to set up an OData v4 integration with Microsoft Business Central.

The OData provider as source for a data integration activity is intented for exporting Dynamicweb data to Dynamics 365 Business Central. 

The OData provider supports export of the following object types:

• Order
• User
• User Address
• User Customer
• User Customer Ship-to Address

Using the OData provider as destination provider is intented for importing data from Business Central to Dynamicweb.

There are two use cases of the OData provider as destination: OData API imports and OData V4 imports. The latter has the upside of utilizing predefined mappings for all object types where as the API use case will essentially delegate to the Dynamicweb provider to allow the user to define custom entity mappings.

There are two distinct types of endpoints for OData integration: OData API and OData V4 (anti-pattern). The desired type of endpoint must be selected when setting up a data integration activity. You can acces a step-by-step guide for each of the endpoint types by following the links below.