1. Beyond the BDC\BCS Model

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

3. 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

4. Overview

5. Problem

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

7. Scenario
Data Source
External Content Type
Model
BCS
SharePoint

8. 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 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.

9. BDC Methods

10. 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)

11. 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
Where is it used?
Business Data Item Web Part
Business Data Column
BDC Profile Page
BDC Search

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

13. Out of the Box Web parts

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

15. 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

16. External List
Demo

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

18. External Data Column
Demo

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

20. Business Data Web Parts
Demo

21. Integrated with regular search
Security Trimmed
Blob Support
Incremental Crawls

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. Actions

25. 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="
<ActionParameters>
<ActionParameter Name="ProductID" Index="0" />
</ActionParameters>
</Action>
        </Actions>

26. Demo
BDC Actions

27. Demo
Custom Web Part

28. Demo
WOrkflow

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