The TFS Query object is used to run queries stored on the TFS Server. When this class is instantitated, the constructor requires two or more parameters named WorkItemStore and WIQL text. The WIQL text can be navigated to using the QueryFolder and QueryDefinition for 'Shared queries' folder and the name of the query respectively and using the QueryText property on the QueryDefinition. However if the WIQL text has a reference to variables such as '@Project' it throws the TFS Error. Ok. That had to do with wrapping constants in quotes and TFS permissions and this is now automated.

Assuming that security provided by an OAuth implementation for REST APIs is a layer above the actual APIs for various services, there should be no logic within the API implementation that

checks the user or client or their mapping to a token. That should be taken care of such that all API implementations except for the OAuth ones will work for all callers. In such a case,

the APIs should uniformly be governed by this security declaration. One way to implement that would be to declare an ActionFilterAttribute such that all APIs can be decorated with it. This

provides a uniform security declaration.
The Implementation for this ActionFilterAttribute can for example check the following:
1) validate the api key that it belongs to a known set of registered clients
2) validate the access token by pulling up the corresponding userId, clientId and mapping
These implementations are at the controller level but can be expanded to private methods and extensions
The attribute itself may be packaged in a separate assembly say the OAuth2.Provider.web.dll and made available via Nuget.
The checks for UserID may already be available via API implementations that rely on aliases for userID.
The checks for ClientID and Token mapping require talking to OAuthProviders either local or remote and hence they need additional configuration sections to retrieve these values from.
The last check can be applicable across all APIs since the apiKey and accessTokens are available to each.
The mapping for the tokens could be stored centrally in the same database as the user profiles from where userId is validated.

This post continues from the previous post in that we discuss the validations for client and the client authorizations. Specifically, we did not mention the state parameter and its use to thwart cross site forgery attacks. such attack is mounted when a victim user agent is made to follow a malicious URI to a trusting server. An attacker usually injects its own access token to make the victim client post sensitive user information to the attacker's protected resources instead of the user's resources. The, OAuth server associates an access token to a user. Given an access token, it will correctly resolve the user associated with the token but it may not detect that an access token has been replaced because the same client could have been authorized by more than one user. With this injected token,  the attacker is able to hijack the session and gain access to sensitive information.
CSRF protection becomes necessary. The redirection URI is typically protected by requiring any request to include  a value that binds the request to the user agents authenticated state such as a hash of the session identifier in the state parameter.
This additional information enables a client to verify the validity of the redirects. This is simple for the clients to enforce and hard for the attacker to circumvent.
The authorization server must also enforce such CSRF protection for its authorization endpoint and enforce that a malicious client cannot gain an access token without user intervention.

In OAuth implementation, There are four kinds of TokenProviders. These are ResourceOwnerTokenProvider, ClientCredentialTokenProvider, AuthorizationCodeTokenProvider and RefreshTokenProvider. It's the TokenProvider that implements the checks for valid user Id and valid client Id. Therefore, the TokenProvider should also implement the check to see that the token is mapped to the same user Id and ClientId as expected. The access    token need not be stripped by the proxy. If the proxy strips the access token and forwards it on to the API implementation, then it should implement the check to see that the token maps to the user and the client correctly. Unless the access token is received by the API implementation, it is hard for the API to validate the same. The only mitigation in such a case is to keep a registry of all TokenProvider calls such that the incoming clientIds are recorded and queried against the proxy. If a client registry fails the proxy lookup, then it should be denied any tokens. For clients that are registered but not user authorized, we look it up with another call to the proxy asking for the applications allowed by the client. If two clients are registered and authorized by the same user, the registry for clientId and accessToken maintained by the API will mitigate the hijacking of token between these two clients. This step by step check is only necessary when we are relying on a proxy that doesn't automatically validate the clients before issuing the tokens to them. These steps rely on the assumption that the proxy provides methods for lookup a client information based on the client Id and to list all the clients authorized by a given user.

When the API has its own implementation of an OAuthProvider, instead of relying on the proxy, then the token database maintained by the API will have an association between the token, the user and the client. That enables a single central checkto validate a given access token instead of authenticating a client.
OAuth RFC mentions there are more than one way to authenticate a client and the common practice being the use of a client credential such as a client id and a client secret. The other kinds of client authentication can be password or public/private 

key pair. The only thing the RFC mentions as a must is that the clients should not be authenticated by their apikey or clientid alone since it is public and can be switched. Therefore a lookup of the client secret against a client registry is required. This client secret is sent to the authorization server in the request body as opposed to the apikey that's passed as 

query string. Further, the RFC distinguishes the clients as confidential clients and public clients saying the confidential clients should have a client authentication method.

In OAuth, There are four kinds of TokenProviders. These are ResourceOwnerTokenProvider, ClientCredentialTokenProvider, AuthorizationCodeTokenProvider and RefreshTokenProvider. It's the TokenProvider that implements the checks for valid user Id and valid client Id. Therefore, the TokenProvider should also implement the check to see that the token is mapped to the same user Id and ClientId as expected. The access token need not be stripped by the proxy. If the proxy strips the access token and forwards it on to the API implementation, then it should implement the check to see that the token maps to the user and the client correctly. Unless the access token is received by the API implementation, it is hard for the API to validate the same. The only mitigation in such a case is to keep a registry of all TokenProvider calls such that the incoming clientIds are recorded and queried against the proxy. If a client registry fails the proxy lookup, then it should be denied any tokens. For clients that are registered but not user authorized, we look it up with another call to the proxy asking for the applications allowed by the client. If two clients are registered and authorized by the same user, the registry for clientId and accessToken maintained by the API will mitigate the hijacking of token between these two clients. This step by step check is only necessary when we are relying on a proxy that doesn't automatically validate the clients before issuing the tokens to them. These steps rely on the assumption that the proxy provides methods for lookup a client information based on the client Id and to list all the clients authorized by a given user.

OAuth testing discussion continued
we had discussed a few test cases with OAuth earlier. The server has to validate a response. 

QueryFolders and QueryDefinitions are how the TFS arranges the QueryHierarchy in its object model. We were looking for ways to find items in this hierarchy. What we could do is we could cast the QueryHierarchy as another QueryFolder. Then access the QueryItem as by GUID or name with the accessor Item["Guid"] or Item["String"].  It is not clear from the documentation whether these are recursive but the paramter seems to indicate so.
In any case, you can use the FindNodeInSubTree method mentioned earlier with the Project object. Since the QueryHierarchy is part of the project, this search can return the desired result as well.
Another approach to do this search for a specific query definition would be to organize the query definition in a specific tree structure of the folders that is described by say a SubTreeHierarchy. When you cast any node in the the project level sub-tree into this SubTreeHierarchy object and it doesn't turn out to be a null, then you have an object that can tell you the path to the sought after query definition in constant time.
Another approach is to do breadth first search or a depth first search of the entire subtree. Since the structure of a tree at least for queries could be finite and the algorithms to search for the breadth first or depth first are known and since the starting point could be anywhere in the QueryHierarchy tree, this works well too.
In addition, lookup by name or Id could be faster, if we used the hash that the Item accessor provides. If possible, then the string could be used instead of the GUID.
Another approach to do this search could be to work with the structure alone instead of lookup by attributes such as name or id. For example, the third node of the folders under the second node of the folders under the root has the query definition we are interested in after we have looked it up in the Team Foundation Server using the Visual Studio Work Items selection in the team explorer.
Regardless of the method we use, we are relying on the object model to lookup the query, execute it and give us the desired results.
The object model differs from the API model in that we don't hide complexity behind the objects and their methods. In the API model for example, we take well known methods and arrange the resources. True the API could appear as methods of a singleton object or a composition but that's not what it is designed for. The APIs allow for any number of variations and mix in the API calls to solve different tasks that the APIs have been written for. By keeping the methods the same and promoting it over http, it only adds ease of use, diagnosability and testing by visual means. The API trace not only identifies sender, receiver, request, response, their payload and parameters but also the timestamp, the order and the duration for each. This is a sufficient plan to know what was invoked when and allows for usage outside the program.
This is where OData comes into picture. What we could achieve by client model to gain access to the data is now available via the web since they are exposed directly as resources for individual or collective listing.