10
Introducing Business Connectivity Services
WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?
- Introducing the various components of Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and its part in SharePoint’s Composites capabilities
- Understanding the various solution types available when building a BCS solution and what tools are used to build the solutions
- Identifying what components you have available based on your edition of SharePoint 2010
Organizations generally have data stored in several systems with SharePoint being only one of those systems. The Business Connectivity Services component of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is a tool for bringing data from external systems into SharePoint and Office. The external data can come from a variety of sources and can be leveraged in your SharePoint environment in a number of ways.
This chapter introduces you to the various components that make up Business Connectivity Services, how it works behind the scenes, what kinds of solutions you can build, and what tools you’ll need to get started.
WHAT IS BCS?
The Business Connectivity Services (BCS) component of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 allows you to define external systems, create models that represent the data in those systems, and then surface that data for use in both SharePoint and Office. An overview of BCS is shown in Figure 10-1.
The external data being presented by BCS can be accessed using one of the ...
