WCF Data Service with Entity Framework - interoperability concerns

Question

In general, are WCF Data Services interoperable or Microsoft specific?

This ADO.NET Blog link shows very nice how EF could be used in WCF Services. But it also shows in that simple example a method with return type: IQueryable<Patient>. Is this breaking the interoperability?

Is there any special treatment regarding these Data Services with EF to be interoperable? Are there tips or things to take care in this matter?

Answer 1

This MSDN overview says WCF Data Services are interoperable. I believe returning IQueryable<> is to support the OData query expressions.

I'd assume you won't have to do anything special (other than maybe exposing the services with WebHttpBinding and WebHttpBehavior).

If you're evaluating technologies you may want to look into ASP.NET MVC4 Web API as an alternative to WCF Data Services. Take a look at this blog and this forum post.