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OData Adapter | Sender and Receiver

What is OData Adapter? 

An OData Adapter is an integration component that lets cloud platforms or enterprise systems connect to and communicate with OData APIs using the standardized Open Data Protocol.

Key Capabilities

CRUD Operations: Supports standard actions like Create, Read, Update, and Delete on exposed data entities.

Built-in Query Options: Simplifies data filtering, sorting, pagination, and selection using native parameters (like $filter, $select, $top, and $skip) without manual query writing.

Automatic Metadata Handling: Reads service metadata (EDMX files) to automatically discover entity sets, map structures, and convert payloads between formats like JSON, ATOM, and XML.

Authentication: Supports secure connections via Basic Authentication and OAuth 2.0.

Common Use Cases

Enterprise Integration: Widely used in platforms like SAP Cloud Integration (CPI) and Oracle Integration to link cloud apps with systems like SAP S/4HANA, SuccessFactors, or Ariba.Data Migration: Used to securely extract, transform, and load (ETL) structured entity data between disparate business systems.

Sender Adapter:

The OData Sender Adapter in SAP CPI (Cloud Platform Integration) allows you to expose your integration flows as OData services. This means external clients can call your CPI iFlow using OData protocol (REST + metadata), which is common in SAP UI5, Fiori, and other SAP apps.

Receiver Adapter:

In SAP Cloud Integration, receiver adapters are crucial for enabling communication with external systems. When integrating with an OData API, developers can choose to use either an OData (V2/V4) receiver adapter or an HTTP receiver adapter. While the OData adapter offers convenience by automating some tasks, it also comes with limitations that may necessitate the use of an HTTP adapter. In this blog, I will share my experiences regarding the advantages and limitations of the OData adapter in comparison to the HTTP adapter.

Advantages of the OData Receiver Adapter::

Automated X-CSRF-Token & Cookie Handling

One of the key advantages of the OData adapter is its automatic handling of the X-CSRF-Token and cookies, which is essential for making POST, PUT, and DELETE requests. When making a POST, PUT, or DELETE request using the HTTP receiver adapter without providing a valid token and cookie, you will likely encounter the error...: “HTTP operation failed invoking … with statusCode: 403” with the response body “CSRF token validation failed”. (Important to note is that - although this error seems to indicate a missing or invalid X-CSRF-Token - it may also be caused by missing or invalid cookies).

Configuration Details:

Sample URL:

https://services.odata.org/V2/(S(xjqjf2rkzrvecxualorv4hp))/OData/OData.svc

Here, specify Operation details like Query (GET), POST, Update ..etc based on your requirement.

And then select Resource Path and Query Details..as shown in above screenshot.

Page Size:

Maximum number of records that must be fetched in one page of results.

The value is set to Empty by default.

If no value is set, then Server-side pagination(__next link) is considered.

If a value is entered, Client-side pagination is considered with the value provided.

It’s recommended to leave the value Empty.

Process in Page:

By selecting Process in Pages, you enable the adapter to process messages in batches. The size of a message is defined by the value that you specify for the Page Size.

To use Process in Pages, you must use the adapter in a Local Integration Process that is invoked by a Looping Process Call step. In the Looping Process Call, provide the loop condition details that follow:

Select Expression Type as Non-XML

For Condition Expression, provide ${property.<receiver.name>.<channel.name>.hasMoreRecords} contains 'true'

For Maximum Number of Iterations, provide 999

This option isn’t enabled for Content Enricher.

Retry:

Select the check boxes based on your business case..

OData V4: (latest)

 

Allow Chunking - select it if required.

Now, test the iflow from Postman as shown below..

Status code is 200 OK, it means - Successfully you have received the response from SAP CPI.

Note:

The considerations for choosing between the HTTP and OData receiver adapters in SAP Cloud Integration depend on your integration scenario's specific requirements. The OData adapter simplifies integration with automated token handling and entity management, making it ideal for standard SAP services with XML payloads. However, for specific scenarios that require non-XML payloads or navigation paths, the HTTP adapter provides the necessary flexibility.

I hope this blog provides some insights into when and how to use the HTTP and OData adapters effectively. Please feel free to share any additional experiences or tips in the comments.

Thanks for reading. :-)

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