SharePoint 2010 Business Intelligence Module 5: Business Connectivity Services

Overview Business Connectivity Services

Lesson: Business Connectivity Services Overview Business Connectivity Services Upgrading

Overview Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is the evolution of the Business Data Catalog (BDC)! Changes include:  Read AND Write  Tools for creating, debugging and maintaining your Application Definition files Offline data support Code Generation for CRUD operations and interfaces  End users can do it!

Business Connectivity Services Goals of BCS  Bring External data into SharePoint  Provide external data in a central location  Extend the reach of Enterprise Data  Easily customized solutions (by End Users!)

External Content Type A building block for creating applications You can add ECTs via  SharePoint Designer  Visual Studio 2010  Import as App Def External Lists  Built from External Content Types  Allow usage of the list forms to add/modify and delete items from the ECT!

Drawbacks to BCS BCS automatic form generation really only works with denormalized, non-relational tables structures  Doesn’t work well for workflow processes (insert data that spans multiple tables/datasources)  Can be used to insert something, that would start a process, which in turn could have some simple steps later on Great for simple inserts and viewing data!

Upgrading Older Business Data Catalog files will not import into the new BCS/BDC You will need to migrate them to the new schema New Schema is available at  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Bin\bdcmetadata.xsd BDCMetaman can do the conversion for you 

Demonstration: BCS Let’s look at:  Creating a BCS application

Lab 1: BCS Complete the lab exercises:  Create BCS Application

Lab 2: BCS with Data Warehouse Complete the lab exercises:  Create BCS Application using our Data Warehouse data

Lab 3: BCS and Office 2010 Complete the lab exercises:  Create BCS Application that feed Office 2010 Applications

Summary Business Connectivity Services is a powerful way of gain access to Enterprise data Simple integration with SharePoint Lists and forms for End Users Multiple ways to create and use BCS Applications as End Users!