I had lots of problems getting ember data (1.0.0-beta.2) to work our back end services. After many hours of debugging I decided to write this hold us over until ember data stabilizes.

data_access.js

App.DataAccess = Ember.Object.create({
  namespace: 'api',
  cache: {},

  getTypeName: function (type) {
    return type.toString().match(/\w+$/);
  },

  isId: function (query) {
    return typeof query === 'string' || typeof query == 'number';
  },

  buildUrl: function (type, query) {
    var url = '/' + this.get('namespace') + '/';
    if (this.isId(query)) {
      url += this.getTypeName(type) + '/' + query;
    }
    else {
      url += this.pluralize(this.getTypeName(type));
      if (typeof query === 'object') {
        var params = [];
        for (var key in query) {
          params.push(encodeURIComponent(key) + '=' + encodeURIComponent(query[key]));
        }
        if (params.length > 0) {
          url += '?' + params.join('&');
        }
      }
    }
    return url;
  },

  // type is an ember class
  // query is an id or hash where keys/values will be passed on the query string
  // without query all objects are returned
  find: function (type, query, skipCache) {
    if (!skipCache) {
      //check the cache
      var cache = this.get('cache');
      if (cache[type] && cache[type][query]) {
        console.log('from cache');
        return cache[type][query];
      }
    }
    var url = this.buildUrl(type, query);
    var self = this;
    return $.getJSON(url).then(
      function (response) {
        console.log('from ' + url);
        var result = self.serialize(type, response);
        if (!self.isId(query)) {
          // cache the query result
          self.addToCache(type, query, result);
        }
        return result;
      }
    );
  },

  serialize: function (type, data) {
    if (data instanceof Array) {
      var items = Ember.A();
      for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
        items.pushObject(this.serialize(type, data[i]));
      }
      return items;
    }
    else {
      if (this.serializers[type.name]) {
        return this.serializers[type.name](data);
      }
      else {
        var obj = type.create(data);
        if (data.id) {
          // cache the object
          this.addToCache(type, data.id, obj);
        }
        return obj;
      }
    }
  },

  addToCache: function (type, key, item) {
    var cache = this.get('cache');
    if (!cache[type]) {
      cache[type] = {};
    }
    cache[type][key] = item;
  },

  pluralize: function (name) {
    var plurals = this.get('plurals');
    return plurals[name] ? plurals[name] : name + 's';
  },

  // hash of pluras that break the "append s" default
  plurals: {
    person: "people",
  },

  // hash of custom serializers keyed by type name
  serializers: {
  }
});

example_route.js

App.Person = Ember.Object.extend({
  firstName: null,
  lastName: null
});

App.PersonRoute = Ember.Route.extend({
  model: function (params) {
    return App.DataAccess.find(App.Person, params.person_id);
  }
});