Business Connectivity Services architecture

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Microsoft Business Connectivity Service provides Collaboration Platform between SharePoint and External Systems.And beautiful feature for External Data and Applications in Side the SharePoint 2010.
By Using BCS  In SharePoint 2010 you can Create External Content Type for External Data Source and which allows you interaction in SharePoint list and Other out of the box Features. Collaboration External data with Microsoft Office Business Application like Microsoft excel, outlook, Word, Workspace Clients. Take a great advantage of Office user experience in your external business data Like Sap and other System. BCS is a Solution for business data to give standard interface for users and single development Platform for Developer to Manage Multiple Data Source and  Collaboration ADO.net,Web Service,Wcf to Create New rich SharePoint Application with  integrated  existing external Data .
By using Business Connectivity Service you can consolidate communications with back end data Sources    like  Databases and Business Application like dynamic, Oracle, SAP, SQL Server. its very  Easy Collaborate Data between SharePoint and Office 2010 with Others System with leverage  of SharePoint 2010 Features Like Workflow ,InfoPath form and Clients Microsoft Office Application. By using InfoPath you can design very fast CRUD Form with external content type and list.  Normally in enterprises data is coming from various data sources and business Application. It’s really difficult for Developers  to mange them for business User.Allow them to Collaborate. And also user has to experience so many deferent User Interfaces and UX . So as developer you should bring them one single uniform user interface for there   all Multiple Data source  and  external System for easy user experience.

If Drilling into the BCS Architecture

Reference http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee661740.aspx

If we see BCS Arch web have two type of BCS Runtime.
BCS  Server Side Runtime 
    Which Deal list by using  External Content Type  with SSS.
BCS Client Runtime
      Microsoft Office with Custom Plugin and out of the box functionality for List. cache for external data source which allow offline customization.



  Major Component  for BCS Solutions
 
  External List 
   contain external data upon external content type
  External Content Type 
basic Matadata and scheme for to Manage CURD operation with external data-source. and Provide Object Model and map data Type with external system(Web Service,Db,LOB,Rest)  and SharePoint.

Data Types Supported by External List InfoPath Forms
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff621597.aspx

  External Data 
          (Data form source like contacts from dynamic in outlook  )
 API   Consumer


Use Secure Store Service.
To connect BCS with deferent external Systems. you need to different credentials for  current   user with Multiple accounts. To store all credentials  for use of BCS we use SSS.
 Reference http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554863.aspx

Customize External List Forms Using Microsoft InfoPath
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554886.aspx

BCS Support for Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 designer

Visual Studio 2010 


Example : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/gg621216(how to Create External Content type)

 Visual Studio BDC Model
                            Model is the major  Component of BCS. Model is entity(ECT) which contain data structures. abstract Methods .
   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb447533.aspx 
  Modelling with Web Service 
   model will depend on the behaviours of Wcf & web service Methods with programmed  on web service Side.
    Every ECT should have uniquely identify an instance of that type. because without unique identifier bcs can not fine instance of entity. 


External System Connectivity
 You can use . Web Service and ADO as well but bcs provides out of the box connectors with biztalk and Custom Connectors API.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff464398.aspx

SharePoint  2010 Designer 


ECT Designer in SPD 2010 allow you to create ECTs by connecting Web Servies and and Xml, Dd with xml and code

Example : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556431.aspx
Reference  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556789.aspx

Business Connectivities Service with XML
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee559369.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556805.aspx


Types of Solution 


by Usama Wahab Khan