OData and Integration Statements

Statements for managing OData services, external entities, and browsing service contracts.

Mendix supports consuming and publishing OData services. Consumed services (OData clients) connect to remote OData endpoints and make external entity types available for use in your application. Published services expose your domain model entities as OData endpoints for other applications to consume.

OData Client Statements

OData Service Statements (Published)

External Entity Statements

CREATE EXTERNAL ENTITIES

Bulk-create external entities from a consumed OData service’s cached $metadata.

-- Create all entity types from the contract
CREATE EXTERNAL ENTITIES FROM Module.Service;

-- Create into a specific module
CREATE EXTERNAL ENTITIES FROM Module.Service INTO TargetModule;

-- Filter to specific entities
CREATE EXTERNAL ENTITIES FROM Module.Service ENTITIES (Customer, Order);

-- Idempotent — update existing entities
CREATE OR MODIFY EXTERNAL ENTITIES FROM Module.Service;

Complex types are flattened

The Mendix domain model has no complex types. A property typed as an OData ComplexType is imported as one attribute per leaf — the same thing Studio Pro does — named <property>_<leaf> and read over the OData path <property>/<leaf>:

The complex type may live in any Schema in the document — it is resolved by qualified name, so two namespaces may each declare a Quantity.

Three properties of a complex type are not importable. Each is reported by name and reason rather than dropped, so an import that loses something says so:

• Inherited properties. Only a complex type’s own properties are imported. Where AirportLocation derives from Location, the inherited Address is not reachable through it (CE6615) — though the same Address is imported normally through a property typed Location directly.
• Leaves Mendix cannot represent, such as Edm.GeographyPoint (CE6622).
• A complex type nested in a complex type — flattening is one level deep.

Two more consequences:

• Flattened attributes are read-only. Mendix treats an external entity that contains them as readable and deletable only, whatever the entity set’s InsertRestrictions / UpdateRestrictions say. Marking them creatable or updatable is CE6630.
• They are filterable and sortable only where their entity is — that is, on an entity backed by an entity set. On a derived or contained type they are neither. CE6630 fires in both directions here, so this follows the contract rather than a fixed answer.

Contract Browsing Statements

Browse available assets from cached service contracts without network access.

Related Show/Describe Statements

Catalog Tables

After REFRESH CATALOG, the following tables are available for SQL queries:

Example: Find available entities not yet imported

SELECT ce.EntityName, ce.ServiceQualifiedName, ce.PropertyCount
FROM CATALOG.CONTRACT_ENTITIES ce
LEFT JOIN CATALOG.EXTERNAL_ENTITIES ee
  ON ce.ServiceQualifiedName = ee.ServiceName
  AND ce.EntityName = ee.RemoteName
WHERE ee.Id IS NULL;