Chapter 8: Integrating Line-of-Business Data Using Business Connectivity Services
What You'll Learn in This Chapter:
- Getting to Know Office business applications (OBAs)
- Understanding the Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and how you can build OBAs using them
- Working with SharePoint and Office integration techniques using BCS
One of the key innovations in SharePoint 2007 was the Business Data Catalog (BDC), which was a set of services and Web parts that enabled read-access to ADO.NET and Web service-based connections to line-of-business (LOB) systems. However, there were limitations with the BDC (for example, it was read-only), so, SharePoint 2010 introduced the Business Connectivity Services (BCS) as an evolution to the BDC.
BCS evolved the BDC to be read/write, more programmable, and to look and feel like other lists in SharePoint. BCS is important because many companies want to integrate LOB data with SharePoint, and they want read/write access to that data from SharePoint and Microsoft Office. Because these applications integrate LOB systems with SharePoint and Microsoft Office, they are called Office Business Applications (OBAs).
This chapter introduces you to the concept of OBAs and discusses SharePoint’s new BCS functionality that provides great integration with LOB systems. This chapter also walks you through some practical examples of how you can integrate ADO.NET-based and Web service-based connections with SharePoint and Microsoft Office to create an OBA.
Understanding ...
