Lohith G N (aka Kashyapa) has just published a tour of Sesame Data Browser for OData on his blog. He did an excellent job! I strongly advise you to head to his post to learn what Sesame Data Browser has to offer and how to use it.
OData Shared Vocabularies, Annotations, and Sesame
During MIX11 this week, Pablo Castro, Software Architect in the Data and Modeling Group at Microsoft, gave a talk named “OData Roadmap: Services Powering Next Generation Experiences“.
Pablo gave demos of what’s cooking for OData and what to expect over the coming months.
One thing that he demonstrated was extensibility with Shared Vocabularies. This allows tools and applications to offer a richer experience through annotations on OData feeds.
Pablo used Sesame Data Browser as an example of how Shared Vocabularies can be used. With annotations on the MIX11 Speakers and Sessions feeds, Sesame is able to display visit cards (VCards) for speakers and a calendar view containing sessions.
I invite you to watch the video recording on the session’s page. The demo starts at 0:52:34.
Annotations
Calendar view
VCard view
Vocabularies for OData were introduced on the OData blog. The current stage is exploratory and implementation is open for discussion in the OData mailing list.
Note: this feature is not available in the currently public version of Sesame Data Browser (1.0.7).
Telerik and Azure DataMarket case studies
Some time ago I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Microsoft and Telerik about Sesame. The results are two case studies.
I was impressed by the job done by the interviewers and the editors.
The first case study covers Sesame Data Browser‘s support for OData and Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket – No doubt… that’s a Microsoft product name. It was called Dallas previously. I just call it Azure DataMarket.
- Short version: Real World DataMarket: Interview with Fabrice Marguerie, Owner, metaSapiens
- Full version: ISV Optimizes Data Browsing Tool for Online Data, Expects to Enter Global Marketplace
- Word version
The second case study is about how the Telerik RadControls for Silverlight product was useful for creating Sesame Data Browser.
Sesame update: recent connections, videos, feedback and more
Sesame Data Browser has just been improved with new features.
Here is what you get this time:
- Most recently used connections remembered
- Support for videos
- Complex types are not displayed by default any longer
- Ability to use with no Internet connection
- UserVoice forum for feedback
- Additional sample services suggested
- Improvements for Azure DataMarket, née Dallas
- Bug fixes and small improvements, as usual
Let’s focus on the main improvements:
Most recently used connections remembered
You no longer have to enter the same addresses again and again. Sesame Data Browser will now remember the addresses you used and suggest them to you the next time you want to open a connection.
The authentication settings are restored for each address you reopen.
Hint: pressing the Enter key will make re-opening a connection even faster.
Support for videos
Until now, Sesame offered support for pictures, but not for videos. I’m pleased to announce that videos can now be displayed right inside Sesame.
You can give this a try with the INETA Live service (http://live.ineta.org/InetaLiveService.svc/), for example. If you open the LiveVideos feed and click on the “View Video” button for a video, that video will start playing.
Changes for complex types
Complex types are not displayed by default any longer. A click on a button is now required.
Displaying all complex types immediately consumed to many resources.
If you want to see this change in action, open the Netflix service and select the Titles feed. You will see a View button for the BoxArt, Instant, Dvd and BluRay columns. Clicking on this button reveals the content of the cells.
Ability to use with no Internet connection
Previously, Sesame Data Browser wouldn’t work with no Internet connection because it loaded the OData support from a dedicated package from metaSapiens.com each time. This package is now embedded in the main package, so no additional loading is required when Sesame Data Browser is installed on the desktop.
Of course, this is useful only when you browse local services with no dependencies on remote services or data.
UserVoice forum for feedback
Finally, because your feedback is important for the future of Sesame, you can now use a UserVoice forum to suggest improvements and to report issues.
This feedback forum is also available from the Sesame Data Browser preview page via the orange Feedback button.
Please try the new version now and let us all know what you think.
OData feeds for Proagora.com
There’s a new OData kid on the block: The data from Proagora.com is now available as OData.
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As on the website, data published as OData is about jobs, companies, and experts.
Two feeds are available, one for each of the languages supported by Proagora at the moment:
- English: http://proagora.com/en/odata/
- French: http://proagora.com/fr/odata/
Of course, you can use your favorite OData explorer to browse these feeds:
These OData feeds exhibit several interesting features of Sesame Data Browser, such as:
- Rich and easy navigation in data
- Pictures and Web hyperlinks
Known issue: Columns/properties selection ($select) fails with an error. I haven’t found a solution yet.
Please give this a go and send me your feedback.
Gentle reminder: have you published your profile on Proagora.com? 
Sesame: Microsoft Dallas support
With the release of Microsoft Codename “Dallas” CTP3 and the features announced in the previous post, it became easier to add support for Dallas to Sesame Data Browser.
The new version of Sesame published today allows you to browse Dallas datasets, as demonstrated below.
Creating a connection to a Dallas dataset in Sesame is easy. You just need a dataset URL and an account key.
The Dallas portal
In order to get an account key and URLs, you need to visit https://www.sqlazureservices.com and sign in with a Windows Live ID. You’ll then be able to subscribe to datasets, such as AP Online (Associated Press) or business information from InfoGroup:
Note: Only CTP3 services are supported in Sesame.
Once you have a subscription, you can visit its preview page. This is where you’ll find the URL you’ll use in Sesame.
Here is for example the page for AP Online:
The URL for AP Online is highlighted in blue on the above picture.
Your account key is available on the “Account keys” page:
Dallas in Sesame
Now that you have an account key and a URL, you can create an OData connection in Sesame:
Here is the result for AP Online if you click on GetBreakingNewsCategories:
Copy a category ID and click on GetBreakingNewsContentByCategory.
Paste the category ID in categoryId and type 5 for count:
After clicking on Open, you’ll get data in a grid, as usual:
You can also locate the news items on a map:
Known bugs
- A bug in Dallas CTP3 prevents the “Load more” button to work correctly in all cases.
- Dallas CTP3 does not support all filter operations. Namely, the EndsWith, StartsWith, Contains, DoesNotContain and IsContainedIn don’t work with Dallas datasets.
Please give this new version a try. As always, your feedback and suggestions are welcome!
Sesame: Spatial OData on Maps, Service Operations, HTTP Basic Authentication
Sesame Data Browser has just been updated to offer the following features for OData feeds:
- Maps
- Improved Service operations (FunctionImport) support
- HTTP Basic Authentication support
- Microsoft Dallas support
Maps
Sesame now automatically displays items on a map if spatial information is available in data.
This works when latitude and longitude pairs are provided.
Here is for example a map of drinking fountains in Vancouver:
This comes from DrinkingFountains in http://vancouverdataservice.cloudapp.net/v1/vancouver, which provides latitude/longitude for each fountain.
Here is another example, without latitude/longitude this time:
This is a map of the customers from the Northwind database, which are located based on their country, postal code, city, and street address.
Service operations (FunctionImport)
Support for service operations (aka FunctionImports) has been improved. Until now, only functions without parameters were supported.
It’s now possible to use service operations that take input parameters. Let’s take as an example the GetProductsByRating function from http://services.odata.org/OData/OData.svc.
This function is attached to Products, as you can see below:
A “rating” parameter is expected in order to open the function:
After clicking Open, you’ll get data as usual:
HTTP Basic Authentication
New authentication options have been added: HTTP Basic and Dallas (more on the latter in the next post).
HTTP Basic authentication just requires a user name and a password, and is simple to implement.
Microsoft Dallas support
All of the above features enabled support for Microsoft Dallas. See this other post about Dallas support in Sesame.
Please give Sesame Data Browser a try. As always, your feedback and suggestions are welcome!
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