The Kendo UI for jQuery library had an easy to configure DataSource, that could be used to wrap around a REST API.
Is there something similar (planned to be) in Kendo UI for Angular2? Or is the recommended way to use services that wrap around @angular/http, and use RxJS Observables?
Nope, they consider Angular2 to have sufficient functionality, so your last supposition is correct.
I'm afraid that we do not plan to have a DataSource component. We believe that having a DataSource like the one in Kendo UI for jQuery does not fit in the NG2 context. The framework already provides most of the DataSource functionality such as ability to fetch data, change tracking etc. Also there are pleiad of libraries and patterns for working with data. Thus, having single component to handle all of those seems more of a unnecessary constraint.
However, we do plan to make available helper functions in order to streamline the Grid data operation descriptors serialization and operation handling. Providing better flexibility and integration with the rest of the NG2 ecosystem. Some functions already exist for sorting and paging for OData. As well as generating a comparer function for in-memory processing (this is demonstrated in this sample).