Business Connectivity Services Overview

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) enables users to read and write data from external systems —through Web services, databases, and Microsoft .NET Framework assemblies—from within Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010 applications. Both SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 applications have product features that can use external data directly, both online and offline. Developers can gain access to a rich set of features and rapidly build solutions by using familiar tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.

High-level architecture of BCS ^[1]

The following figure shows how to achieve connectivity using BCS.

The major feature in BCS is Business Data Connectivity (BDC) Service that creates ability of connecting SharePoint and Office with customers’ existing databases, their / 3^rd-party Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web services, .NET connectivity assemblies and custom data sources.

Each participant in this connectivity (SharePoint Server, Client Applications and External Systems) has a bundle of major components as in the following figure.

BCS major components ^[4]

BCS Benefits

Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS) offers the following benefits for working with external systems and processes.

·         Read or Write to External Systems – Helps create, read, update, delete, and query (CRUDQ) to the external system from a Microsoft Office application or SharePoint site if the external system supports the operations.

·         Familiar User Interface - Users can work in their familiar work environments without having to learn different user interfaces.

·         No-Code Connectivity to External Systems - Using Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, the solution developer can declaratively describe the external system and tell Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 what data he or she wants.

·         Offline Access to External Data - Provides rich cache and offline work features, and supports cache-based operations. The read/write operations performed against cached external items are synchronized when connection to the server becomes available.

·         Governance of External Data - After data from the external system is loaded into Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 by the Business Data Connectivity (BDC) service; you can access the data securely and take advantage of a straightforward audit trail.

·         Discovery Through Search - Business Connectivity Services offers discovery of external data via SharePoint Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2010.

·         Life Cycle Management – Provides a large numbers of features combined with tools (SharePoint Designer 2010, Visual Studio) to implement application life cycle management.

References

[1]    Understanding Business Connectivity Services, MSDN, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554916.aspx

[2]    Connectivity Using Business Connectivity Services, MSDN, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556852.aspx

[3]    Business Data Connectivity (BDC) Service, MSDN, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556407.aspx

[4]    Inside Microsoft SharePoint 2010, O’Reilly Media Inc.

[5]    What Is Included in Business Connectivity Services?, MSDN, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556390.aspx

[6]    Business Connectivity Services Benefits, MSDN, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556440.aspx