Querying data services

Your company has an application that currently is consumed by in-house applications. There is a need to make it accessible to outside parties that use this in-house application but extend it. As such, the capability to consume and manipulate the data is critical. Enabling users to accomplish this through URI-based semantics seems like the optimal solution.

Would it be possible to provide access through URI-based semantics using Data Services?
What operations are easily supported?