Beyond the BDC\BCS Model

About me Phill Duffy Product Manager at Lightning Tools MCTS Application Developer for 2007 & 2010 Co-Author of BCS MS Press Book

Agenda Overview BCS Methods and their uses Out of the Box Web Parts SharePoint Designer Actions Searching your External System Custom Solutions Client-Side Server-Side Workflow Logic Questions

Overview

Problem

What’s the matter with that? Business User Developers Manage access Logins User Interface Search Data Relation Custom Development

Scenario Data Source External Content Type Model BCS SharePoint

What’s New? Read-write Design and customization tools Rich client integration Work online or offline Client Object Model Declarative Solutions Read-write. You can create, read, update and delete external data from SharePoint and Office applications. More connectivity options. In addition to database and web services, connect to WCF services or plug your own code into a .Net assembly connector to handle transformation or aggregation of data. Full support for Claims-enabled services as well as Secure Store Service (formerly SSO) to map user credentials. Design and customization tools. Huge investments in SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 to allow creation and customization of code-less and code-based solutions. Composite solutions can be collaboratively built by a team with each member using the tool(s) of their choice. Build applications faster and easier. Rich Client integration. Expose data as a native SharePoint list and then connect it to SharePoint Workspace or Outlook. Customize InfoPath forms to add business logic surfaced consistently in SharePoint and SharePoint Workspace. Customize Outlook to provide views, forms, ribbon buttons or show contextual data in a taskpane – all without writing code! Work online or offline. External data is cached in a SQL CE database installed with Office 2010. When connectivity is lost, the cache automatically goes into offline mode. When connectivity is restored, BCS can synchronize data changes directly to the external system. Secure Store Service The Secure Store Service is an authorization service that runs on an application server. The Secure Store Service provides a database that is used to store credentials (consisting of a user identity and password) for application IDs that can be used by applications to authorize access to shared resources. For example, SharePoint Server 2010 can use the secure store database to store and retrieve credentials for access to external data sources. The Secure Store Service provides support for storing the credentials of multiple back-end systems using multiple application IDs.

BDC Methods

Finder Returns all the rows of Business Data Catalog entity. Select FirstName, LastName from People Where is it used? Business Data List Web Part Business Data Column (item picker)

Specific Finder Returns one specific row based on the entity’s identifier value passed in as a parameter. Select FirstName, LastName from People where PersonId = @PersonId Where is it used? Business Data Item Web Part Business Data Column BDC Profile Page BDC Search

IdEnumerator Returns all the identifier values of an entity. Select PersonId from People Where is it used? BDC Search

Out of the Box Web parts

Presentation External List External Data Column Business Data Web Parts Search Office Client Applications Custom Solutions

External List Behaves like a SPList* Can take Offline Extend with InfoPath Forms No Datasheet view or RSS Feeds Works as if you are working with SharePoint list with SharePoint Data Full Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD) capability (if the methods are defined on ECT) Developers can access via regular SPList Object Model Can take Offline i.e to Outlook for Contacts, Tasks, Calendars Data is stored in the External System Sort and Filter Standard and Customizable Views Extend with InfoPath Forms No Datasheet view or RSS Feeds

External List Demo

Stores a copy of the data External Data Column Meta Data Stores a copy of the data

External Data Column Demo

Business Data Web Parts List Item Item Builder Related List Connectivity Filter Chart Show Examples

Business Data Web Parts Demo

Integrated with regular search Security Trimmed Blob Support Incremental Crawls

Office Client Applications Contacts Tasks Posts Appointments Direct Connection Client Cache Outlook, Word, SharePoint Workspaces, Access and InfoPath can make use of External Content Types Other Office Applications can be used via code Map to Office Types – Have you Business Data providing E.g.. Outlook Contact, Tasks and Appointments BDC Runtime is on the client and connects to the External Data directly and not via SharePoint Client Cache allows disconnected and connected scenarios.

Custom Solutions Web Parts Application Pages Office Add-ins Silverlight and WPF Applications Workflow actions Win-Form Applications It is also possible using the Object Model to create custom: Web Parts Application Pages Office Add-ins Silverlight Applications \ Web Parts WPF Applications Win-Form Applications There are now 2 Object Models – Client and Server The Developer only needs to program against the BCS API and does not need to worry about where the data is coming from.

Actions

BDC Actions I.e. might be that you want to look up a Product name on a Product Comparison site on the internet, or look up a companies location on Microsoft Live Maps <Actions> <Action Name="BDCActionSample“ IsOpenedInNewWindow="true” Url="http://www.ProductSearch.aspx?ProductID={0}" ImageUrl=""> <ActionParameters> <ActionParameter Name="ProductID" Index="0" /> </ActionParameters> </Action>         </Actions>

Demo BDC Actions

Demo Custom Web Part

Demo WOrkflow

Don’t forget to fill in survey …or I will! Questions Don’t forget to fill in survey …or I will!