SharePoint 2010: BCS m Business Connectivity Services

What’s new in Business Connectivity Services Frank Cleynen ECM Consultant Getronics

Agenda Customer feedback What is BCS? Demo External data in SharePoint

Feedback Read/Write Read is nice... but writing would be even nicer Tooling support We need an easier way to create, debug and maintain application definition XML files I wish it was all part of the system Why not work offline as well ?

Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Enabling no-code collaborative solutions that balance self-service control

Investment Areas

Challenges with back end data

Business Connectivity Services

Architecture

External Content Types (ECT) = the BCS building block Superset of entity capabilities; describes: - Structure of the external system - How this data behaves in SharePoint and Office Manage and reuse from a central location Added to the BCS through: - SPD VS Part of a model

External Content Types (ECT) BCS-enabled solutions rely on ECTs to integrate external data into SharePoint and the Office client applications Can be reused in - External list- Word - Search- InfoPath - Outlook- Access - SharePoint Workspace- MS Office(code)

BCS Overview

DEMO

External lists Expose external data as a native SharePoint list - Full CRUD capability - Familiar UI and navigation - Sort, filter, group - SPList OM access - Forms: OOTB or upsize with InfoPath - Work offline

External vs. Regular list Key differences: - No default fields: title, created (by), modified (by) - List items don’t have unique int32 ID - No events - Item level security on external source - Read/Write depends on external source - Data stored in external system

External vs. Regular list Not supported - RSS - Edit in datasheet/grid view - Export to Excel - REST interface - No workflows can be associated

Working offline Connect to Outlook as - Contacts - Tasks - Calendar - Posts Download to SharePoint Workspace

Visual Studio integration New Project template: Business Data Connectivity Model Create reusable BCS components Visual designers Creates ECT of type ‘.NET assembly’ Upsize IT solutions created in SPD 2010

Solution types

Lifecycle Management Part of WSP-based SharePoint application packaging, deployment and administration

What’s in the box

Recap CRUD Complete integration Easy creation, development and maintenance

Q&A m

Thanks and good evening!!