Business Connectivity Servi

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) Creating an External Content Typ...
http://claytoncobb.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/business-connectivity-serv...
A-PDF Watermark DEMO: Purchase from www.A-PDF.com to remove the watermark
1 of 9
Clayton's SharePoint Madness
da
ra
m_
ra
me
sh
@
ya
ho
o.c
o.i
n
All About SharePoint, InfoPath, and SharePoint Designer!

Home
SharePoint 2010
Blog Request Log
Contact
View my MCP Certifications
My Categories
Top Posts
InfoPath - Get user information without writing code (extended)

InfoPath 2010 Rules!
Blog Listing
Recent Posts
MSDN Forums SharePoint Task Force A Call to Arms!
InfoPath 2010 Designing External List Forms
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) Creating an External List from an ECT
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) Creating an External Content Type (ECT) based on a SQL 2008 Table
SharePoint 2010 Update 1 Infrastructure Setup: Single Server Farm
Having Trouble Activating Windows 7 RTM?
InfoPath Copy SharePoint List Data to Main Data Source
InfoPath User Roles in Browser-Enabled Forms Using AD Groups
InfoPath 2010 Rules!
Using [ME] to Filter InfoPath Form Views Based on Form Metadata
9/26/2010 3:30 AM
2 of 9
Archive
da
ra
m_
ra
me
sh
@
ya
ho
o.c
o.i
n
August 2010 (1)

October 2009 (3)
August 2009 (3)
July 2009 (2)
June 2009 (6)
Blog Stats
92,768 hits
Blogroll
Ben Peters
InfoPathDev
Spence Harbar
Tidbit on the Bits
Subscribe
Entries (RSS)
Comments (RSS)
Tags
7 64-bit active
directory auto-number automatic filename browser browser-enabled browser
Contact Selector GetCommonMemberships

permissions Qdabra.com qrules
forms
GetUserProfileByName group memberships ID infopath InfoPathDev moss Office 2010
roles security security groups
sharepoint
SharePoint 2010
SharePoint Designer SP2010 SQL 2008
UserProfileService user roles W2K8R2 Win7 Windows7 Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 R2 Word 2010 Workflow

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) Creating an External Content Type

(ECT) based on a SQL 2008 Table
Posted by Clayton Cobb on October 25, 2009
Rate This
Let the SharePoint 2010 Madness begin! My first post-NDA blog entry will be about the new Business Connectivity Services
(BCS), which replaces the Business Data Catalog (BDC). The purpose of the BCS (and formerly BDC) is to expose business
data from non-SharePoint data sources within your SharePoint 2010 environment. Sure, we could do that with the BDC, but
it required a very complicated application definition file (ADF) that made it very difficult to successfully create a
connection. Due to this complexity and the fact that Im not a developer at all, I never used the BDC myself without
developer help. Also, we could only read from those data sources. At the 2009 SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas,
Microsoft announced this as #2 on the Top 10 SharePoint 2010 features. Please bear in mind that the BCS is a huge topic
that can go very deep. Todd Baginski (MVP) presented a deep dive on the BCS that goes far beyond what Im talking about,
9/26/2010 3:30 AM
3 of 9
so I will link to that presentation when it becomes available. Also, you can keep track of BCS info on the BCS Team Blog.
da
ra
m_
ra
me
sh
@
ya
ho
o.c
o.i
n
Well, things have changed drastically now. Not only can we build BCS connections in SharePoint Designer with a built-in
GUI, we can also perform write actions back to the data source. This blog will be fairly simple, but that is by design, because
I want to show that a non-developer can easily create a BCS connection and start interacting with external data within
minutes. In this scenario, this is what well be using:
SQL 2008 Database with 1 Table
SharePoint Designer 2010 connected to a SharePoint 2010 Team Site
Build (or locate) your SQL Server database
For this scenario, I built a very simple database with a single table containing 5 columns (Fig 1). Basically, Ive created a
Business Contacts DB for storing the business name, city, state, value, and partner status. After creating the DB, I added 9
rows from within the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) interface (Fig 2). For later use, remember that the DB Server
is named MOSS, and the DB is named ECT.
Fig 1 SQL 2008 Database with a simple table
9/26/2010 3:30 AM
4 of 9
da
ra
m_
ra
me
sh
@
ya
ho
o.c
o.i
n
Fig 1 SQL 2008 Database with business contact data
Create External Content Type in SharePoint Designer 2010
After creating the DB and noting the DB/Server name, its time to open up SharePoint Designer (SPD) 2010. SPD 2010 can
only be used with SharePoint 2010. It cannot be used with MOSS 2007, SPD 2007 cant be used with SharePoint 2010, and
SPD 2010 cannot be used for editing other non-SharePoint websites. However, you can have both SPD 2010 64-bit and SPD
2007 (32-bit only) installed on the same machine (I have them both on my Win7 64-bit machine). It is now a dedicated
design tool for SharePoint use. So, to use it, you have to have a SharePoint 2010 site to connect to, otherwise there are no
available functions. Once you connect to your site where the External Content Type (ECT) should reside, click on the Site
Object named External Content Types in the left navigation pane. After that, you should see a button on the top left of the
ribbon labeled New External Content Type. Click that, and you will get to a page where you can create your new content
type (Fig 3).
9/26/2010 3:30 AM
5 of 9
da
ra
m_
ra
me
sh
@
ya
ho
o.c
o.i
n
Fig 3 New External Content Type view in SPD 2010
Name the External Content Type
First, youll want to name the ECT (Fig 4). The display name is what will show up in the External Content Types Site Object
in the SPD 2010 left navigation pane.
Also, I forgot to show it on this screenshot, but the Office Item Type is important. You can leave it as generic, but if you
choose the Contact type, then it will be treated like an Outlook contact, which means that if you later connect to this data
from Outlook, all the data will show up in nifty Contact cards. I did choose that option when making my real ECT but forgot
to show it on this screenshot.
9/26/2010 3:30 AM
6 of 9
da
ra
m_
ra
me
sh
@
ya
ho
o.c
o.i
n
Fig 4 ECT named BizList
Discover Your External Data Source
Now, youll want to click the link next to External System that says, Click here to discover external data sources and define
operations. This will take you to a new page where you click the Add Connection button, which causes a pop-up prompt to
appear for selecting your data source type. The available options are .NET Type, SQL Server, and WCF Service (Fig 5). For
this example, I chose SQL Server.
Fig 5 External Data Source Type Selection
After choosing the SQL Server data source type, you get another prompt. This is where you define the connection to your
database (Fig 6):
Database Server: MOSS (noted above when showing the screenshot of SSMS)
Database Name: ECT (same as above)
Name (optional): What I learned with this field is that if you make the same ECT on another site collection, then you
get a warning when trying to recreate an ECT in a different site collection with the same name. I had left this field
blank the first time I tried it, so when I tried it again in the same farm with a blank name, I got the error. Thats when I
decided to give it a name the name of the site where I was using it. This is important to remember for the future
Identity: I chose to connect with MY user identity the user creating the ECT but I of course have access to the
SQL DB. If I didnt, then I wouldnt be able to make this. The 3rd option is the one that enables the Secure Store
Application ID field at the bottom. This is the new Single Sign-On for those of you who used that in MOSS 2007.
9/26/2010 3:30 AM
7 of 9
da
ra
m_
ra
me
sh
@
ya
ho
o.c
o.i
n
Once you put in the correct information and click Ok, SPD will connect to the DB and return info about it. You will see the
DB icon with the name you gave in the Name field above. You will also see folders that represent tables, views, and other
items. You should see your relevant table within the Tables folder.
Fig 6 Defining the connection to your SQL Server DB
Define Your Operations
This step is where the magic happens. After finding the table you want to use, right-click on it, and you will see some
operations to choose (Fig 7). This part is beautiful, because it does it all for you without any code. In this case, I chose to
Create All Operations. This options creates the well-known CRUD operations Create, Read (Item), Update, and Delete
but it also creates an enumerate operation (Read List), so I like to call it CRUDE.
Fig 7 Creating your CRUD operations

Again, SPD 2010 will do its thing, and when it finishes, you will see a report of the operations that were successfully created
(Fig 8).
9/26/2010 3:30 AM
8 of 9
da
ra
m_
ra
me
sh
@
ya
ho
o.c
o.i
n
Fig 8 A successfully created External Content Type with full CRUD operations
This leads us straight into the next blog, which will discuss what you do with an ECT once its created:
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) - Creating an External List from an ECT
Share this:
StumbleUpon
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

InfoPath Copy SharePoint List Data to Main Data Source
InfoPath 2010 Designing External List Forms
BCS External Lists
This entry was posted on October 25, 2009 at 11:15 PM and is filed under BCS, SPD 2010, SharePoint 2010. You can follow
any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Leave a Reply
Name (required)
E-mail (required)
Website
XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <pre> <del
datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Notify me of follow-up comments via email.

Notify me of new posts via email.
9/26/2010 3:30 AM
9 of 9

da
ra
m_
ra
me
sh
@
ya
ho
o.c
o.i
n
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Andreas09 by Andreas Viklund.
9/26/2010 3:30 AM

Business Connectivity Servi

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Business Connectivity Servi

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Business Connectivity Servi

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) Creating an External Content Typ...

A-PDF Watermark DEMO: Purchase from www.A-PDF.com to remove the watermark

Clayton's SharePoint Madness

All About SharePoint, InfoPath, and SharePoint Designer!

View my MCP Certifications

InfoPath - Get user information without writing code (extended)