Introduction
Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Business Connectivity Services helps small and medium-sized businesses as well as bigger organizations put their business data to work—and create valuable business solutions. Use Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, or Microsoft SharePoint Online (part of Microsoft Office 365 cloud services) to unlock data and increase productivity.
Who Should Read This Book
The book is aimed at business users, project managers, architects, administrators, and decision makers who want to create solutions that are required to create, use, share, and find information using Microsoft SharePoint 2010 websites, where the information is not stored in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SQL Server content databases. Led by SharePoint experts, you’ll learn hands-on strategies for deploying business solutions that integrate data from business applications and databases using BCS.
Who Should Not Read This Book
The book is not aimed at developers; therefore, it does not cover in detail the creation of server-side code using Visual Studio. However, it does contain examples of client-side code (such as XSLT, JavaScript, and jQuery) that can be incorporated into business solutions using tools such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 to present and manipulate data exposed when using BCS.
Assumptions
This book assumes that you have a working knowledge of SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010 client applications. If you need to learn how to use SharePoint 2010, we recommend that you read the following two books:
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Step by Step by Olga Londer and Penelope Coventry (Microsoft Press, 2011)
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Plain & Simple by Johnathan Lightfoot and Chris Beckett (Microsoft Press, 2010)
System Requirements
To use this book, you must have access to a server running SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 or SharePoint Online. These product provide different Business Connectivity Service (BCS) capabilities that are explained in the book. Directions on how to install these products are outside the scope of the book. However, once you have access to one of these products, this book details how to configure and extend BCS.
The book uses the the Microsoft Adventure Works LT and AdventureWorks databases when creating a SQL Server external content type (ECT), external lists, and dashboards. You can download these databases from http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com.
To use the companion content (sample files), you must have a development environment where Visual Studio and a SharePoint server product are installed on the same server. The requirements for developing SharePoint Solutions can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ee231582.aspx.
Organization of This Book
This book provides a comprehensive look at the various SharePoint features you will use. It is divided into three parts.
Part I: Planning and Maintaining Business Connectivity Services
This part provides an introduction to Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and why you might want to use it. It details BCS terminology and the tasks that a SharePoint server administrator and business owner need to complete to enable users to present the external data within SharePoint websites.
Chapter 1, reviews how organizations have changed over the last 20 years with regard to business data, and how these changes led to organizations having pockets of data throughout their business processes. The chapter then explains how BCS can provide a uniform method of accessing data for all stakeholders in an organization.
Chapter 2, introduces the types of solutions you can create with BCS and how you can plan and extend BCS. This chapter explores the BCS architecture and how it is divided into four layers: external system, connectivity, presentation, and tools.
Chapter 3, first explains the SharePoint service application architecture and its effect on the deployment of BCS. The chapter then breaks down the server administration tasks to create and configure a Business Data Connectivity (BDC) service application, explains the security options, outlines how to configure the Secure Store Service, discusses modifications to the BCS throttling settings, and details the administration of BCS in a tenant environment.
Chapter 4, helps you hook up external data with SharePoint and Office applications with the creation of an external content type (ECT). The chapter explains that while you can use other tools to create an ECT, SharePoint Designer provides you with a wizard to easily define the BDC model, ECT, BDC objects, and operations that you are allowed to perform on the external system.
Part II: Presenting External Data
In this part, you’ll learn how to extend the user experience to display and manipulate content from an external system in Office 2010 client applications and websites built on top of SharePoint 2010.
Chapter 5, explains that the preferred method of displaying data from external data sources is to use external lists. The chapter helps you use both the browser and SharePoint Designer to create external lists, and finishes by showing you how to use external columns in SharePoint lists and libraries.
Chapter 6, explores how to build business data dashboards using Business Data Web Parts and other Web Parts, and how to configure them in an effective way.
Chapter 7, helps you use external data within Microsoft Office applications, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft SharePoint Workspace, and Microsoft Access, as well as how to modify external list forms with Microsoft InfoPath Designer 2010.
Chapter 8, provides tools and strategies that allow organizations to provide their users with the ability to search for all relevant business data, whether it is stored within SharePoint SQL content databases or outside SharePoint. This chapter explains the search options available, depending on the version of SharePoint 2010 that you are using.
Chapter 9, explains how you can use BCS to populate user profile data that exists elsewhere within your organization, and explores how this benefits an organization when using SharePoint 2010 features such as people search and audience targeting. This chapter also explains how you can use Duet Enterprise to connect SharePoint 2010 and SAP solutions.
Chapter 10, helps you to connect SharePoint Online, which is part of Office 365, to external data. It compares the use of BCS SharePoint Online with dedicated SharePoint Online and with an on-premises installation of SharePoint 2010. The chapter finishes by describing how to build a SharePoint Online BCS solution.
Part III: Extending the Out-of-the-Box Business Connectivity Services Functionality
In this part, you’ll explore the options you can use to extend BCS.
Chapter 11, introduces the SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model and how you can leverage client-side code to create solutions to greatly extend how your organization works with line-of-business (LoB) data.
Chapter 12, introduces the use of Visual Studio to build SharePoint solutions, how to use Visual Studio to build solutions that execute code on SharePoint servers, as well as how to use Visual Studio to create and deploy BDC models.
The Appendix A, describes the BCS metadata object hierarchy and details the relationships among commonly used metadata objects.
Conventions
The following conventions are used in this book:
Boldface type is used to indicate text that you type.
The first letters of the names of ribbon tabs, dialog boxes, dialog box elements, and commands are capitalized. For example, the Save As dialog box.
Keyboard shortcuts are indicated by a plus sign (+) separating key names. For example, Ctrl+Alt+Delete means that you press the Ctrl, Alt, and Delete keys at the same time.
About the Companion Content
We have included companion content to enrich your learning experience. The companion content for this book can be downloaded from the following page:
The companion content includes the following:
The BDC model project used in Chapter 12.
The BDC model .bdcm file referenced in the Appendix A.
Acknowledgments
We’d like to include a special thanks to Kenyon Brown (O’Reilly Media senior editor), Neil Hodgkinson (technical reviewer), Kristen Borg (O’Reilly Media production editor), Nicole Flores (copyeditor), and all the people at O’Reilly who kept us on track and provided such excellent suggestions.
Writing a book is never easy and it places a considerable amount of strain on personal and professional lives. On many occasions while writing this book, we ignored our families and loved ones, even when we were supposed to be on holiday with them. So it is with our greatest appreciation and admiration that we say thank you to them.
Support and Feedback
The following sections provide information on errata, book support, feedback, and contact information.
Errata
We’ve made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this book and its companion content. Any errors that have been reported since this book was published are listed on our Microsoft Press site at www.oreilly.com:
http://go.microsoft.com/FWLink/?Linkid=248518
If you find an error that is not already listed, you can report it to us through the same page.
If you need additional support, email Microsoft Press Book Support at [email protected].
Please note that product support for Microsoft software is not offered through the addresses above.
We Want to Hear from You
At Microsoft Press, your satisfaction is our top priority, and your feedback our most valuable asset. Please tell us what you think of this book at:
The survey is short, and we read every one of your comments and ideas. Thanks in advance for your input!