OData

OData (Open Data Protocol) is a standardised REST-style query syntax for querying and modifying data over HTTP. Dataverse's Web API (the /api/data/v9.x/ endpoint) exposes OData v4. Standard OData operators — $filter, $select, $expand, $orderby, $top, $skip, $count — work across implementations. Used by external integrations, Power Automate's Dataverse connector, JavaScript on model-driven forms (Xrm.WebApi), Power BI direct query, and most modern HTTP clients. OData is the canonical choice for modern Dataverse integration; FetchXML remains relevant for views and complex analytical queries. Both compile to the same underlying SQL.

In practice, an OData query against Dataverse looks like a normal URL: GET [org]/api/data/v9.2/accounts?$select=name,revenue&$filter=revenue gt 1000000&$orderby=revenue desc. The $expand operator is the one that trips people up most — it lets a single request pull a related entity's columns inline (an account's primary contact, say) instead of a second round-trip, but expanding too many relationships in one query gets slow and hits response-size limits fast, so most integrations expand sparingly and make a second call for anything genuinely deep.

Where confusion shows up: OData and FetchXML are not interchangeable syntaxes for the same thing despite compiling to similar underlying queries — FetchXML supports some aggregate and grouping features OData's Dataverse implementation doesn't expose cleanly, which is why views and reports still lean on FetchXML while modern point-to-point integrations default to OData. Business Central's own OData v4 API (a separate implementation from Dataverse's) follows the same protocol but exposes a completely different set of entities and pages, so OData knowledge transfers as a syntax, not as a shared data model, between the two products.