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 filesOffline 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

www.lightningtools.com

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!