Microsoft recently announced a new project called Odata - the Open Data Protocol - set of conventions over the existing Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) standard. This new tool will give web developers a way to unlock and share their data that would otherwise be locked within an application. In addition, Odata will give web developers a way to interoperate with OData implementations. One example of the use of Odata was the web system for the 2010 Winter Olympics where developers built a web application on Windows Azure using an Open Data catalogue from the City of Vancouver.
