Introducing Business Connectivity Services

Brett Lonsdale

About Me

• Email: brett@lightningtools.com• Web: www.lightningtools.com• Web: www.sharepointpodshow.com• Blog: www.brettlonsdale.com• Twitter: @brettlonsdale

Agenda

• Problems Solved by BCS• Overview of BCS• What’s new?• Server Capabilities• Client Capabilities• External Lists in Detail• Tooling• Demonstration

Problems solved by BCS

• Islands of data into 1 application

Finance

Human Resources

IT

Weekly Issue Tracking Meeting

Extranet Collaboration

Site

Office

SharePoint Workspace InfoPath Word Outlook

SharePoint

External Lists

Enterprise Search

External Bus field

TypeWeb Parts User

Profiles

Overview of BCS

BDC Client Runtime BDC Cache Offline

Operations ECT BDC Runtime Security

Solution Packagin

g

Out of the Box

UI

CRM SAP Siebel LOB

SPD

VS

What’s new?

• Entities become External Content Types– Now more than just a schema– ECT’s describe behavior

• WCF and .NET Assembly Shims• External Lists• Client Runtime• Read/Write• Access consumes BCS• Tools

Terminology

• Enterprise Content Type – Table/View etc• Finder Method – Returns multiple

columns/rows• Specific Finder – Displays a row• IDEnumerator – Used by the Enterprise Search

to enumerate the rows• Action – URL and Parameters• Association – Join (Relationship)

Server Capabilities

• External Lists– Backend data presented in a SharePoint style list

• InfoPath and Web Forms for Updating | Inserting data

• Business Data Web Parts– Now Ajaxian– Really only here for backwards compatibility

• External Data Column– Use LOB data in Lists & Libraries

• Workflow• Search

Client Capabilities

• SharePoint Workspace• Outlook• Office Business Parts (OBPs)– List of Items– Single Item

• Word• Access• VSTO

External Lists

• Create, Read, Update Delete operations• Sort/Filter• Standard and Customizable Views• Manipulation via the SPList OM• Portable Across Sites• Extend with InfoPath Forms, Custom Columns, SPList• No Datasheet view or RSS Feeds• Item Level permissions on External Data• Alerts

Tools• SharePoint Designer

– No code solution– Create External Content Types– Configure the connection to the Datasource– Define Methods– Simple Associations

• Visual Studio– Code solution – Mashups of Datasources– Complex Associations– Output a .NET Assembly– Lightning Strikes Twice! BCS Meta Man

Demonstration

• Use SharePoint Designer to connect to a Line of Business system

• Create and use an External List• Take data offline using Outlook and SharePoint

Workspace• Using the External Data Column

Q & A