IMPLEMENTING BCS-BUSINESS CONNECTIVITY SERVICES

SOFTWARE - THE SHAREPOINT/OFFICE 365 WAY

BY: SHAHZAD SARWAR

BCS

Enables users to read and write data from external systems—through Web services, databases, and Microsoft .NET Framework assemblies—from within Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office applications.

PHASES FOR BCS DEVELOPMENTThe groundwork phase During this phase, you plan, prepare, and set up how to access the external data.The SharePoint phasesurface the external data in SharePoint products in a variety of ways, including external lists, external data columns, Business Data Web Parts, workflows, search results, profile pages, actions, Apps for SharePoint, and code-based SharePoint components or solutions

The Office phase surface the data in a variety of Office products (including Excel, Word, Outlook, Visio, Access, and InfoPath), Apps for Office, and code-based Office components, add-ins, or solutions.

WHICH HAT TO WARE ?

BCS-ARCHITECTURE- SERVER-SIDE SOLUTIONS

• Users interact only with external

data in a browser on a SharePoint

site

• SharePoint Enterprise Search of

external data is supported in the

browser as well.

Click to add text

BCS-ARCHITECTURE-CLIENT-SIDE VERSIONOffice 2013 applications interact with external data. A client-side solution can run independently of SharePoint.

BDC Client Runtime queries the BDC model, which is stored in the BDC client-side cache, for the details about how to connect to the external source, which credentials to use, and what the external data source is

BCS-ARCHITECTURE-CLIENT-SIDE VERSION• Not all of the Office 2013

applications interact with external data and some of them only do so in a read-only manner

• To work with external data in Microsoft Office 2013, your computer requires one or more of the following free software products:• Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4

• WCF Data Services 5.0 for OData V3

• If the solution uses Visio, you will use the Link Data To Shapes feature in Visio to browse to an external list and connect to it

BCS-ARCHITECTURE-ON-PREMISES SOLUTIONone where the SharePoint 2013 farm and the external system are both behind a company’s firewall and live in company-controlled data centers and users will have to be on the company’s network to access it

BCS-ARCHITECTURE-CLOUD-ONLY SOLUTION

Business Connectivity Services in a SharePoint Online tenancy can access data from various cloud services. For example, SharePoint Online can access data from a third-party stock quotes service or from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace Data Market by using the Business Connectivity Services web service connector. Because this type of solution doesn’t include any customer-maintained SharePoint 2013 farms and hardware and consists of only cloud-based services

BCS-ARCHITECTURE-HYBRID SOLUTION

BCS hybrid solution makes use of SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2013 on-premises. It integrates data from an on-premises OData service endpoint into a SharePoint Online tenancy.

BCS- TYPES OF SOLUTIONS

BCS- TYPES OF SOLUTIONS

BCS-DEVELOPMENT CHOICE

EXTERNAL CONTACT TYPE• Provide reusability

• Encapsulate complexities of external systems

• Provide built-in Office and SharePoint behavior

• Help provide more secure access

• Simplify maintenance

• Enable external data search

• Enable working offline

• How to Create SharePoint 2013

Visual Studio 2012

Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012

or SharePoint Designer 2013

BCS-PROFILE PAGES/CRAWLING

The Create/Upgrade button will be enabled to allow you to create individual pages for your external content types i)Select the checkbox next to the external content type you wish to create the profile page for and then click the Create/Upgrade button in the Profiles Pages section of ribbon.ii) Hover your mouse over the external content type and a drop down control will appear. Click the down arrow and select ‘Create/Upgrade Profile Page’.

• CREATE SITE FOR EXTERNAL SITE COLLECTION• Configure : Create Content Sources , Set Crawl . Complete Crawl .• Search External Content Types

BCS - ASSOICATIONS

• Via Designer

• ???

BCS WITH SQL SERVER

Using BCS and External Content Types in SharePoint to Update SQL Tables• Create an external Content type• Create a data source for the external content type• Create operations against the data source (read/edit etc)• Create the list and formsDemo /Example case

BCS WITH WEB SERVICES

• Sample /Demo

BCS WITH ODATA

• No Support in SP Designer

• Difference SOAP vs RESTfull Vs OData

• Difference Web services vs WCF services ( SOAP vs Resfull) vs Web API vs WCF data services vs Remoting

REST - is an architecture of how to send messages over HTTP.

OData V4- is a specific implementation of REST, really defines the content of the messages in different formats (currently I think is AtomPub and JSON). ODataV4 follows rest principles.

WCF DATA SERVICES VS WEB API

• WCF Data Services focuses on the data model and limits code, while Web API focuses on the controller/code and enables the formatting and query syntax of OData. • WCF Data Services: To expose a data model (EDM or otherwise)

quickly and don’t need a lot of code or business logic• WEB API : building an API and simply want to expose some

resources using either OData query syntax or formatting• WCF Data Services (previously known as ADO.NET Data

Services

WCF SERVICE AS RESTFULL MODEL

• WCF Rest Services are just normal WCF Services that have added functionality so that they can be consumed in a RESTful manner (URI vs URL, Usage of HTTTP Verbs, Usage of Different Data Transfer Formats like JSON, YAML, etc...).

• Examples

WCF VS WCF DATA SERVICES• ADO.NET facilitates connections to a database, while WCF allows communication

over a channel (thereby potentially replacing web services).• WCF SOAP Services (that is, traditional WCF) offers the most flexibility when it

comes to selecting an underlying transport. REST-based programming model, which leverages the universality of the HTTP protocol and uses a URI addressing scheme.

• WCF SOAP Services tend to be operation-based, while REST services are said to be resource-based. That means clients are effectively going to call methods on a SOAP service, while client of a REST service are going to send HTTP requests (mostly GET’s) to a URI

• WCF services are also going to allow you a more advanced level of security (for example, message-based or federated security).REST-based services are all you need, and you can benefit from tight coupling with HTTP

BCS-ODATA CONNECTOR

Sample/Demo

Sample Service : http://services.odata.org/ http://www.odata.org/ecosystem/

BCS WEB PARTS

SUPPORT - EDITION WISE

SUPPORT - EDITION WISE

.NET ASSEMBLY CONNECTOR VS WRITING A CUSTOM CONNECTOR

BCS CUSTOM CONNECTOR

• Sample/Demo

BCS- .NET CONNECTOR

• Sample/Demo

BCS WITH ORACLE/MYSQL/OTHERS(OLE DB, AND ODBC)

Two Ways:• Create a Business Connectivity Services model from the beginning. • Create a Web service or a .NET connectivity assembly to provide an interface to the

external data exposed in the database.

• Sample / Demo

BCS - REST API

• Why REST API - SharePoint 2013 App Model

• Sample/Demo

SELF STUDY AREAS

• BCS-Search Connectors• ARCHIECTURE-Performance • BCS – ACTIONS (Examples BingMAP / Google Query)

• ARCHITECTURE-BCS Limitations

• ARCHITECTURE-Upsizing External List Forms to InfoPath ( Samples)• ARCHItECTURE-Sync

• ARCHITECTURE-WorkFLOW

• Architecture- Pageing/Sorting

• Architecture - Search

BCS-SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

• Thanks Every one…….For Joining the Journey to Knowledge