OData is a protocol for exposing (as you said) data as a REST resource. Page to learn more, http://www.odata.org .
WCF Data Services is an implementation of Microsoft's OData protocol (both client and server) on the .NET platform. Therefore, the service created by the WCF data services uses the OData protocol.
ATOM is a standard format and is one of the possible wiring formats for data transfer in the OData protocol. The OData protocol defines extensions for it. For a better picture, ATOM is an XML-based format that defines XML elements and their meaning (channels, records, links), and OData uses this along with several of its own XML elements to serialize data.
JSON is a standard format (for serializing JavaScript objects) and is one of the possible wiring formats for transferring data in the OData protocol. Thus, the OData protocol uses JSON to serialize data.
Vitek Karas MSFT
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