What if you need to access important data from your back office and integrate it to whatever activity you’re doing on Salesforce? Luckily, Salesforce Connect has a tool you can use – Odata Producer.
Defining OData Producer
OData Producer is a tool that can be used every time you need to access your data stored in other data storage programs. Salesforce Connect lets you use an OData Producer connector, such as OData 2.0 or 4.0 adapter, to let you connect seamlessly to external data providers.
How Does it Work?
If you have an existing NetWeaver and/or Sharepoint accounts, you can now access your saved databases with the help of OData Producer. To do this, you need to use either an OData 2.0 or OData 4.0 adapter by following these steps:
- Validate your org’s OData Producer first by logging on to OData’s website and using their Open Data Protocol Service Validation tool.
- You will be using external objects to communicate with your remote data providers. As you interact with your remote data, an OData query is produced.
- OData callout will start to run after the OData query is finished.
- Remote data retrieval commences. OData Producer will start passing on data in gzip-compressed format to your Salesforce account. You may now easily access and retrieve data stored in your remote data service provider account even if you’re using Salesforce.
- Once you’ve retrieved your data, you can then map them to Salesforce by using external objects. You may now use your successfully mapped data for whatever activity or analysis you’re currently doing.
Kindly note that OData now recommends the use of OData 4.0 adapter. This version is much current than 2.0, its features have been approved by OASIS International Open Standards Consortium, and offers better features such as OData-Isolation for header fields and provisions for using metadata when requesting service.
OData Producer In a Nutshell
OData Producer is a powerful tool that leverages connectivity and improves data management across third-party data service providers. It can be used by Salesforce users to efficiently map important data stored in other platforms like Sharepoint and NetWeaver. OData Producer currently supports the latest adapter model OData 4.0 to facilitate retrieval and mapping of data to the Salesforce interface.