The ADO.NET Data Services Framework is a design specification that includes client and server libraries used to deploy data services on the Web or an intranet. Data is conveyed in the style of representational state transfer (REST) resources addressable by URIs. Data is structured as entities and relationships according to the specifications of the Entity Data Model (EDM).
ADO.NET Data Services use uniform patterns of data representation and transport, such as JSON and AtomPub. Multiple formats are supported so that client applications can select a representation that integrates best with their platform. The JSON format is particularly useful with AJAX application environments.
Applications interact with ADO.NET Data Services by using HTTP verbs such as GET, PUT, POST, or DELETE. The .NET Client Library (ADO.NET Data Services Framework) supports use of ADO.NET Data Services from platforms such as the .NET Framework and Silverlight.
In part 1 of REST with Rails we had an introduction to creating RestFull services with Rails. In this article we will be looking into serving this content using different representations including XML, JSON and Atom. Every resource has a representation, in fact, a given resource can have more than one representation. Users accessing our task manager will want to see an HTML page listing all their tasks, or they may choose to use a feed reader to subscribe to their task list; feed readers expect an Atom or RSS document. If we're writing an application we would want to see the tasks list as an XML document, or JSON object, or perhaps pull it into a calendar application in the form of an iCal list of todo and events. In this section we're going to explore resources by looking at multiple representations, starting with HTML and adding XML, JSON and Atom representations for our tasks list.
Every resource has a representation, in fact, a given resource can have more than one representation. Users accessing our task manager will want to see an HTML page listing all their tasks, or they may choose to use a feed reader to subscribe to their task list; feed readers expect an Atom or RSS document. If we're writing an application we would want to see the tasks list as an XML document, or JSON object, or perhaps pull it into a calendar application in the form of an iCal list of todo and events. In this section we're going to explore resources by looking at multiple representations, starting with HTML and adding XML, JSON and Atom representations for our tasks list.
Yesterday, our feeds infrastructure team released a bunch of new code. There's actually a lot that this service can do; one of the cooler things it now does is to convert arbitrary Atom or RSS feeds into cross-domain-retrievable JSON data structures
Sam Ruby's recent post (Application/Atom+JSON) has sparked some interesting comments. Is there value in a standard way to represent Atom data in JSON data structures? I think so.