Odata is à standardized rest use case for generaal purpose data access, so client tools can use it out of the box. Something like sql but over http. Some tools

Odata is à standardized rest use case for generaal purpose data access, so client tools can use it out of the box. Something like sql but over http. Some tools that provide odata support: tableau, tibco spotfire, linqpad, excel. Excel is a nice example, you can have a sheet with data pulled in over odata from any app that supports odata.