Building business applications using business connectivity services using share point designer 2010 (part 1)
2. SESSION CODE: OFS203
Building Business
Applications using BCS &
SharePoint Designer 2010
Chakkaradeep Chandran (Chaks)
Solutions Specialist
Intergen
3. Agenda
Overview of Business Connectivity Services (BCS)
Building BCS Solutions using SharePoint Designer 2010
BCS Authentication
Workflows and BCS
BCS Limitations
More demos…
3 www.chakkaradeep.com || chaks@intergen.co.nz || http://bit.ly/bcs-resources
4. What is BCS
A set of features that provide the capability to connect
SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 applications to any
external system:
Line-of-Business system (Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, or Siebel)
Web 2.0 service
Custom home-grown application
Provides read/write capabilities to those external systems
It provides out-of-box features, services and tools that
streamline development to deeply integrate external data
and services
4 www.chakkaradeep.com || chaks@intergen.co.nz || http://bit.ly/bcs-resources
5. What about Business Data Catalog (BDC)
Introduced in Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007
Read/Write Support
Read is nice
Write back would be even more powerful
Tooling Support
Need an easier way to create, debug and maintain appdef XML
files
I wish it was baked into the Platform
Wouldn’t it be nice to take it offline?
5 www.chakkaradeep.com || chaks@intergen.co.nz || http://bit.ly/bcs-resources
6. BCS Features
Write-back to External Systems
Familiar UI
More Connectivity Options
Extensible Provider Model
Batch and Bulk Operation Support
Read BLOBs
Read and Write-back of Complex Types
Life Cycle Management
Rich Client Integration
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7. BCS Tooling Support
SharePoint Designer 2010 Visual Studio 2010
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9. External Content Types
Describes the schema and data access
BCS Client capabilities of an external data source Customer
and its behavior within Office and FirstName
SharePoint LastName
Email
(WebService, DB, .Net
object, LOB system, Web GetCustomer()
2.0 service, etc.) GetCustomers()
UpdateCustomer()
DeleteCustomer()
BCS
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10. Presentation Features
External Lists
External Data Columns
Business Data Web Parts
External Content Type Picker
External Item Picker
Profile Pages
Presentation Features in Office 2010
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11. External Lists
Expose external data as a native SharePoint list
Full CRUD capability
Familiar UI and navigation
Sort, Filter, Group
Programmatic access via SPList OM
Profile page available for each item in the list
Form
Auto-generated OOB
Upsize to InfoPath
Offline-able
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12. Surfacing External Data
External Data Columns
Add data from external content types to standard SharePoint lists
Can be made available as Content Controls in Word
Web Parts (SharePoint Server 2010)
Business Data List
Business Data Item
Business Data Item Builder
Business Data Related List
Business Data Connectivity Filter
Chart Web Part
External Data Search (SharePoint Server 2010)
Integrate External Data into search results
14 www.chakkaradeep.com || chaks@intergen.co.nz || http://bit.ly/bcs-resources
13. Solution Types
• Surface data in External Lists
• Connect those lists to Outlook,
SPW Create reusable components
(UI parts, ECTs, actions)
Simple Intermediate Advanced
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15. Authentication in BCS
OOB Support for:
Windows Authentication
Forms Based Authentication
Claims based Authentication
Authentication modes
Revert-to-Self (process account)
Pass-through (logged on user)
Single Sign On (Secure Store)
Secure Store Service
Can store windows credentials or non-windows credentials
A credentials page available to gather credentials from a user & store it in SSS
Extensibility to plug in another SSO
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16. Authentication in BCS
SharePoint Server
Process Account
Credentials
External List Ticket
Delegation Token
BCS Other
Web Part
Runtime
Logged-on Application Secure Store
Service
user
SAML Token Credentials
Application
Delegated Token PassThrough (Uses logged-on user)
RevertToSelf (Uses process account)
SSO Authentication (Credentials, etc. from Secure Store)
Claims Aware Service Legacy LOB
Web 2.0
17. Permissions in BCS
Method Instance
Metadata Catalog
Method Parameter Type Descriptor
Model Association Group Filter Descriptor
External Content
External System Type
Identifier
(LobSystem) External System
Instance
Action Action Parameter
Can be assigned via UI & set on the object itself
Can be set on the object itself Takes it permission from Parent
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18. Using Secure Store Service with BCS
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19. BCS Associations
Sales Order Table
Customers Table
Sales Order External List
Sales Order External List
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20. BCS Associations
Supported Associations
One-to-many Associations - based on a foreign key
A foreign key must be present in the External system
Un-Supported Associations
Many-to-Many Associations – no foreign key
Users will have to develop these Associations in the XML of the
BDC Model files manually using an XML editor or through
another External Content Type designer such as Visual Studio
2010.
Associations with Multiple Related External Content Types
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22. Searching External Data
Create Search Content Source
Ensure Permissions are set
Create ProfilePage Site
Enable ProfilePages in BCS Central Admin
Crawl
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23. Searching External Data using BCS Demo
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24. External Lists and Workflows
Workflows cannot be associated with an External List
This does not mean that workflow does not work with external
lists
You can create a site workflow or list workflow and have it read or
update from an external list
Workflows accessing BCS will always run as service account,
even under impersonation step
Only supported with Secure Store Service (SSS) or
RevertToSelf authentication modes
26 www.chakkaradeep.com || chaks@intergen.co.nz || http://bit.ly/bcs-resources
25. Workflows and BCS
27 www.chakkaradeep.com || chaks@intergen.co.nz || http://bit.ly/bcs-resources
27. BCS Limitations
Workflows cannot be configured on External List
Item level Permissions cannot be given on items in External
List interface
Export to Excel feature is not available on External Lists
Versioning cannot be configured on items in External Lists
Item History is not available in External Lists
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28. BCS Limitations
Datasheet View cannot be used in External Lists
RSS Feed cannot be configured on External Lists
Ratings are not supported on in External Lists
ListData.svc can’t be used for providing REST based access
to External List data
External Data Columns cannot be used as Site Level
columns (can’t be consumed in Site Level Content types)
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29. Related Content
Breakout sessions - Wednesday, September 1 16:15 - 17:15
OFS401 Business Connectivity Solutions Runtime and Object Model Deep Dive
Breakout sessions - Monday, August 30 17:25 - 18:25
OFS209 The new world of SharePoint 2010 Architecture & Administration
Breakout sessions - Wednesday, September 1 10:40 - 11:40
OFS307 Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010: The whole is greater…
Breakout sessions - Tuesday, August 31 14:55 - 15:55
OFS303 Claims based authentication in SharePoint 2010
31 www.chakkaradeep.com || chaks@intergen.co.nz || http://bit.ly/bcs-resources
30. What is Included in BCS
BCS Feature SharePoint Foundation Standard Edition Enterprise Edition
External List
External Data column
BDC Service
Connector Framework
Secure Store Service
External Data Search
Profile Pages
Business Data Web Parts
Rich Client Integration
www.chakkaradeep.com || chaks@intergen.co.nz || http://bit.ly/bcs-resources