# IFS Cloud

With the paradigm shift from on premise installations to cloud hosted ERPs, many of the large vendors has adopted the OData standard to facilitate their integration interfaces. This is also the case for IFS. OData was introduced with IFS 10 and the new web based Aurena client. With the IFS Cloud release the **.NET access provider** was deprecated and replaced entirely by OData. The logical units and PL/SQL packages are still there but sits beneath the FndODataProvider.

### FndODataProvider

Read detailed configuration instructions from[ IFS documentation](https://docs.ifs.com/), search for **OData and FndODataProvider**

> *"**IFS OData Provider** exposes **IFS business entities** and **business logic** through **OData endpoints**. IFS OData Provider with the help of Apache OLingo do the translation between the **OData protocol** and the underlying **IFS Business Logic.**"*

The IFS OData Provider is responsible for parsing the OData requests, executing the business logic and providing a JSON response. 

<figure><img src="/files/E4B9XgqpVVKNY3A4pyDu" alt=""><figcaption><p>Translation of a OData call to a SQL query</p></figcaption></figure>

### Projections

The OData services within IFS are called **Projections**. Projections in are sets of API methods that, in most cases, correspond to a specific page in Aurena. There are for example projections that are designed completely for 3rd party integrations. But most of the 5500+ projections are to support the Aurena functionality, just as packages mainly supported functionally in the Enterprise Explorer in pervious versions. More on projections in the [Terminology](/flow-ifs-cloud-development-guidelines/getting-started/terminology.md#projections) section.&#x20;


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