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WCF Data Services 5.3.0-rc1 Prerelease

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Today we released an updated version of the WCF Data Services NuGet packages and tools installer. This version of WCF DS has some notable new features as well as several bug fixes.

What is in the release:

Instance annotations on feeds and entries (JSON only)

Instance annotations are an extensibility feature in OData feeds that allow OData requests and responses to be marked up with annotations that target feeds, single entities (entries), properties, etc. WCF Data Services 5.3.0 supports instance annotations in JSON payloads. Support for instance annotations in Atom payloads is forthcoming.

Action Binding Parameter Overloads

The OData specification allows actions with the same name to be bound to multiple different types. WCF Data Services 5.3 enables actions for different types to have the same name (for instance, both a Folder and a File may have a Rename action). This new support includes both serialization of actions with the same name as well as resolution of an action’s binding parameter using the new IDataServiceActionResolver interface.

Modification of the Request URL

For scenarios where it is desirable to modify request URLs before the request is processed, WCF Data Services 5.3 adds support for modifying the request URL in the OnStartProcessingRequest method. Service authors can modify both the request URL as well as URLs for the various parts of a batch request.

This release also contains the following noteworthy bug fixes:

  • Fixes an issue where code gen produces invalid code in VB
  • Fixes an issue where code gen fails when the Precision facet is set on spatial and time properties
  • Fixes an issue where odata.type was not written consistently in fullmetadata mode for JSON
  • Fixes an issue where a valid form of Edm.DateTime could not be parsed
  • Fixes an issue where the WCF DS client would not send type names for open properties on insert/update
  • Fixes an issue where the WCF DS client could not read responses from service operations which returned collections of complex or primitive types

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2013
    When will Enums really be supported across with EF 5.0 / 6.0 ?

  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2013
    @Robert - The nuances of enums (serialization format, uri literals, mapping of operators like 'eq' and the addition of the 'has' operator for flags enums) are part of OData v4. v4 is on track for standardization later this year, which means that we (the OData ecosystem) need to demonstrate support for enums somewhere. That doesn't necessarily translate directly to us supporting enums in WCF Data Services but at a minimum we will have a definition as to how they should operate in the protocol. I would hope that either us or Web API will have support for the standardized form of enums by the end of the year, but I obviously can't guarantee anything at this point. FWIW, I want this feature too. :) HTH, Mark