Business Connectivity Services (BCS) for Developers

Chakkaradeep ChandranSharePoint Server MVPIntergen

Agenda• BCS Overview• BCS Solutions• Creating BDC Models

– Create, Update, Delete• More demos…

What is BCS?• A set of features that provide the capability to connect SharePoint

2010 and Office 2010 applications to any external system:– Line-of-Business system (Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, or Siebel)– Web 2.0 service– Custom home-grown application

• Provides read/write capabilities to those external systems• It provides out-of-box features, services and tools that streamline

development to deeply integrate external data and services

The BIG Picture

BCS Client

SharePoint

Business Data Connectivity

External Content Type Repository

External Lists

Dev Platform Enterprise SearchBusiness

IntelligenceCollaboration Social

Enterprise Content Management

Web 2.0DBWCFWeb ServiceLOB

DBConnecto

r

WCF/WSConnector

.NET AssemblyConnecto

r

CustomConnecto

r

BDC Metadata Store

Business Data Connectivity (BDC)

BDC Server Runtime

Presentation in SharePoint

1) External Lists2) External Data Columns3) External Content Type

Picker4) External Item Picker5) Profile Pages

External Content TypesOffice Clients

BCS Client

External Content Type (ECT)

*formerly known as BDC Entity

SharePoint

BCS

External Data Source(WebService, DB, .Net

object, LOB system, Web 2.0 service, etc.)

CustomerFirstNameLastName

Email

GetCustomer()GetCustomers()

UpdateCustomer()DeleteCustomer()

Describes the schema and data access capabilities of an external data source and its behavior within Office and SharePoint

BCS Tooling Support

SharePoint Designer 2010 Visual Studio 2010

No Code Vs Custom CodeNo Code Solutions

External Data Columns

External Lists

Chart Web Parts

Business Data Web Parts

- Business Data List/Related List

- Business Item Data Builder

- Business Data Item

Data Source Type- SQL, WCF Service, .NET Assembly

Custom Code

BDC Object Model

SharePoint Object Model

Client Object Model

Custom Connectors

DemoCreating BDC Models

using VS2010

Manipulating External Lists• External List Template Id = 600• Use SPWeb.Lists.Add(name,description,url,

SPListDataSource) to create external lists• Use the property HasExternalDataSource to check if a

List is an External List• Build CAML query to retrieve your items

• You need a Method tag• Specify the ViewFields

DemoCreating External Lists

using VS2010

BCS Limitations• Workflows cannot be associated with external lists

– However, you can use the external data columns and manipulate the external lists in a workflow

• No RSS feed support for external lists• No REST based access for external lists

– The http://site/_vti_bin/ListData.svc does not support external lists• LINQ to SharePoint spmetal.exe does not support external lists• Cannot configure alerts for external lists• Cannot export external list items to Excel (Export to Excel feature)• Item-Level permissions is not available for external lists

BCS Limitations• Versioning cannot be configured on external lists• Item History is not available on external lists• Datasheet view cannot be used in external lists

– XSLT is supported though

• You cannot create a site column of type ‘External Data Column’– External data columns can be created only as list based columns and cannot be consumed insite level

content types

• No Write support for BLOB– You cannot write back to BLOB fields using BCS unless you write your own method– You can access BLOB columns by defining a StreamAccessor method and presenting the external data

via the BCS Data List web part by checking the Display stream fields property

• Ratings feature is not supported for external lists• Metadata based navigation is not supported for External Lists

Thank You

http://www.chakkaradeep.com

Session Resources

http://www.chakkaradeep.com/page/BCS-Session-Resources.aspx

Thank you to our Sponsors

MS COMMUNITIES