You can use the SharePoint 2010 Farm Configuration Wizard, the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration website, or Windows PowerShell to create a BDC service application. Using the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration website or Windows PowerShell, you can specify the SQL server database name or use a preconfigured database name. When you use the configuration wizard an automatically generated BDC database name is created.

When using the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration website or Windows PowerShell, first check that at least one BDC machine service instance is started on one of the servers in your SharePoint farm. The machine service instance—also known as the SharePoint service—uses the service binaries to manage components such as any related timer jobs to make the service application function correctly. If you have more than one server in your SharePoint farm, then the machine instance can be started on one or more of your servers; SharePoint then provides its own round-robin load-balancing mechanism to evenly distribute user requests for data from the external systems.

Once a machine service instance is started, you can then create the BDC service application. This allows you to manage and create the definitions for the external systems. When the BDC service machine instance is started and its associated service application is created, an Internet Information Service (IIS) Virtual Application is created that runs in the context of an IIS application pool within the SharePoint Web Services IIS website. It exposes a WCF web service, also known as the service application endpoint, as shown in Figure 9-4. This is used by SharePoint itself and can be used by your organization to develop new solutions. Such an endpoint is created by SharePoint on each server on which the machine service instance is started.

Figure 9-4. The BDC service application endpoint created within the SharePoint Web Services IIS website.

Once the BDC service application is started, in the Central Administration website on the Service Applications page, below the BDC service application, you see a BDC service application proxy, also known as the service connection (see Figure 9-5). This provides the connection between the components, such as webpages that want to access the data from the external systems and the BDC service application. The service application proxy also understands the load-balancing mechanism that SharePoint uses, and if you publish a BDC service application for use on other farms, then the service application proxy will be used for managing those connections, as well.

Figure 9-5. The BDC service application and the BDC service application proxy.

The BDC service application contains two interfaces:

When using the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration website, use the following steps to create a BDC service application:

Web applications are linked to service applications through an application proxy group. When you create a new application, proxy it is placed in the default application proxy group. When you create a new web application, you can choose to use the default application proxy group or choose your own custom set of service applications. To change the set of service applications to which a web application is connected, use the Configure Service Application Associations under Service Applications on the Application Management page of the Central Administration website.

Once you have created the BDC service application, the next task you should complete is to set the permissions on the metadata store and the actions that the user or group or claim has, as shown in Table 9-2.

Perform the following steps to set permissions on the BDC metadata store:

To create an external system definition, you need to know which protocol to use to connect to the external content (known as the data source type) and the authentication method to use as well as the operations that you want to perform on the data. The following data source types can be used (these define the connector that the BDC server runtime uses to connect to the external system):

The authentication methods that BDC server runtime uses to retrieve, modify, and delete, if appropriate, the data from the external systems are:

Figure 9-6. The BDC Identity (RevertToSelf) Import error dialog box.

$bcs = Get-SPServiceApplication | where {$_.displayname -eq $BCSname};
$bcs.RevertToSelfAllowed = $True;

The easiest way of defining an external system is to use SharePoint Designer 2010; however, by using this tool, you can only define external systems that use the data source types: SQL Server, .NET, and WCF Service.

Once defined, you can modify the external system definitions by using the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration website. To do so, go to the System Application Information page, click the external system, and then on the External System Information page, select the external system and click Settings to display the Property Settings page. The Property Setting page is not displayed if you select Settings on the System Application Information page.

Perform the following steps to create a BDC Model for an SQL Server database:

Once the external system definition is defined, you can now create an ECT and specify the CRUD operations that you want to execute on that external system. Many organizations use ECTs in preference to using the Data Sources gallery for security and logistic reasons. The ECT can be defined once and stored centrally in the BDC metadata store but used many times for all sites and Site Collections, depending on the permission settings of the ECT. The schema and authentication methods need only be explained to a small number of ECT designers. Unlike the Data Sources gallery, where the data source definition would need to be created for each site on which you want to use the external content.

Creating ECTs

Use the following steps to create an ECT by using SharePoint Designer:

1. On the ECT summary page, give the ECT a name, and if the external content is to be displayed in Outlook 2010, then configure the Office item type as Appointment, Contact, Task, or Post. Switch to the operations view of the ECT.

2. In the External Data Source Type Selection dialog box, select the appropriate data source type, such as SQL Server, and then click OK to display the source type connection dialog box.

3. In the Data Source Explorer, expand the database node by clicking the plus sign (+) to the right of the database name, and then expand Tables or Views or Routines.

4. Right-click the table for which you want to create a BDC Model, and then click the operation for the methods that you want to create.

   Depending on the operations exposed by the external system, you can create all operations or add the individual operations: read item, read list, create, update and delete.

   

   The Operations wizard opens; each page also contains a section that displays issues, warnings, and errors as you configure the operations. The three pages are:

   • Operation Properties Use this page to set the operation name, operation display name, and operation type. For a database external system, you can create all operations if you choose this option; the operation properties are automatically generated and the operation names will be Create, Read Item, Update, Delete and Read List.

   • Parameters Use this page to select those fields, known as elements, that you want to use in your SharePoint solution. You can modify each data source element, including, the identifier name, field name, and the name of the field when it is displayed in the browser. By default, all fields will be shown in the external item picker when adding an external data column to a list or library. If the table, view, or routine returns a large number of fields, displaying them all in the external item picker might confuse users. Therefore, it is best practice to select a small set of elements that best describes an item. If you select an Office item type on the summary view, you will use this page to map the external content data fields to Office properties. The Office mapping form is part of the Read Item operation, and therefore, if you wish to modify these settings once an ECT is created, modify the return parameter properties of the Read Item operation. You also change the Office item type on the summary page once an ECT is created.

   • Filter Parameters Use this page to add your own throttling conditions to your solution, this will optimize the time it takes to return the data from the external system. Remember, external content is not saved in the BCS database but retrieved by the BDC server runtime, when needed. The filter types available are: Comparison, Limit, Page Number, Timestamp, and Wildcard. For string data types, use the Wildcard filter type because this will internally translate to a like clause in queries to get the data. BCS throttling is enabled by default to prevent Denial of Service attacks. You are most likely to see the effect of this feature if no limit filter was created; thus, when the BCS runtime attempted to retrieve data from the external system it timed out due to the large amount of data it was trying to retrieve. For more information on BCS throttling, see the sidebar later in this chapter.

5. Click Finish, and then click Save.

   This will create an external system named <databasename> in the BDC metadata store if this is the first ECT created for the external system, and an ECT with the name you typed in step 1.

$bdcproxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy |
   where {$_.displayname -eq $BDCname};
Get-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig -ServiceApplication $bdcproxy '
   -Scope Global -ThrottleType Connections;
Scope        : Global
ThrottleType : Connections
Enforced     : True
Default      : 200
Max          : 500

Get-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig -ServiceApplication $bdcproxy '
   -Scope Global -ThrottleType Connections |
        Set-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig '
   -Enforced:$False;

$dbrule = Get-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig '
   -ServiceApplication $bdcproxy '
   -Scope Database -ThrottleType Items;
$dbrule | Set-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig '
   -Maximum 2000000 -Default 5000;