Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Server 2010

Microsoft Business Connectivity Services is a set of services and features that connect SharePoint-based solutions to sources of external data.

Introduction

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) were formerly known as Business Data Catalog (BDC) in SharePoint 2007. BDC is a one of the most powerful features of MOSS 2007 to integrate various Line of business (LOB) systems like SAP, Siebel, SQL Server and web services. Now BCS is extended to support .NET assemblies and WCF services as data source(s). Apart from read, update, delete and search, BCS data could be available for offline access.

BCS Operations

External Content Type

External content type is the metadata and connectivity information about external systems. This is the core idea behind the BCS features like external list, external column and external data search and offline access. External content types are content types defined in the Business data model and available as content type in the SharePoint.

External content type is made easy to consume external system data in SharePoint without knowing their complexities. Other benefits are re-usability, maintainability, securable, searchable and offline accessible.

External List

External List is a new kind of list in SharePoint 2010, and used in context of BCS applications. External list data doesn't store in the content database but the external list is mapped to the external LOB system, and data is pulled on demand. External can be made available offline in Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint Workspace. Changes in offline external list is propagated to external LOB system through synchronization.

BCS Development in Visual Studio 2010

SharePoint Designer 2010 workflow can interact with external lists. The read and write workflow activities for regular SharePoint lists have been extended to read external lists. So authoring experience is as simple as regular lists.

In Visual Studio 2010, we can create Business connectivity services and external content types. Visual Studio 2010 Business connectivity services template is available which contains a set of visual designer tools. By using these, developers write custom connectivity services to connect virtually any data source.

Demo for Bcs

A sample SQL database for Creating an external content type

The most effective and easy way to set up a simple BCS connection, is to use SharePoint Designer 2010. In order to do this, we need to create a new External Content Type!

Here's how do create our External Content Type and hook it up with our database, step by step:

1. Open the site you want to work with using SharePoint Designer 2010
2. Select "External Content Types" in the left hand navigation:Click to create a new External Content Type like this:
   
   
3. Click "Add Connection" - Select "SQL Server" as your Data Source Type: 
4. Enter the details about your connection to your SQL Server: 
5. When the connection is made, your Data Source Explorer will be filled with the database you have specified. Now choose the table(Sales Reason) you want to work with, and right-click and select "Create All Operations":
   
   
   
   You'll be presented with a wizard-like dialog where you can specify the operations, elements and other properties for your BCS connection. 
6. Click "Next" to get to the Parameters page
7. Select the field(primary key) that you want to act as an Identifier.
8. Click "Save" and "Finish"
9. Then we  create an external list (using the Browser to show how simple it is..) and hook up our external content type with it!

Creating an external list

There's a few ways to create an external list in SharePoint 2010. We will create it using the Browser UI to show you how simple it can be.

1. Open your site and choose Site Actions - More Options…
2. Select the External List template, and click Create
3. Enter a name for your list, e.g. Product List
4. You'll see a field in this list called External Content Type, click the browse-button beside it:
5. Select your data source and click OK: 
6. Now simply click the button called Create:

You now have the ability to create new items, update existing items, delete items and do all your normal CRUD-operations (CRUD = Create, Read, Update, Delete) straight from the SharePoint 2010 list.