Navigation Properties in Complex Types (public comment c201305e00012)

Navigation properties in Atom are atom:link elements. Complex properties can be collection-valued, so the atom:link elements have to be placed within the representation of each single complex type instance. In ODATA-346 we decided that collections are NOT arrays, and items in a collection CANNOT be accessed by index. This makes features like the /$ref segment unavailable for navigation properties of complex types. This also requires that href attribute values in links within complex type instances MUST be direct links and CANNOT be indirect via the current entities, as they are by convention in OData V2 and V3 implementations. Example 1: Orders is indirect via customer entity, Country is direct with specified key <atom:entry> <atom:link rel="http://docs.oasis-open.org/odata/ns/related/Orders" type="application/atom+xml;type=entry" title="Orders" href="Customers('ALFKI')/Orders" /> ... <metadata:properties> <Addresses> <metadata:element> <atom:link rel="http://docs.oasis-open.org/odata/ns/related/Country" type="application/atom+xml;type=entry" title="Country of residence" href="Countries('DE')" /> <Street>Obere Str. 57</Street> <City>Berlin</City> <PostalCode>D-12209</PostalCode> </metadata:element> ... </Addresses> ... </metadata:properties> ... </atom:entry>

https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/49351/odata-atom-format-v4.0-wd02-2013-05-28.docx https://tools.oasis-open.org/version-control/browse/wsvn/odata/trunk/spec/schemas/metadata.xsd?rev=318 Accepted: https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/49557/odata-meeting-41_on-20130613_14-F2F-minutes.html#odata-407