Transcript The Business Data Catalog

Todd Kitta
1.8.08
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Business Data Catalog (BDC) Basics
Web Parts
BDC Development
Search
API
Demo
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Expose business data with little to no code
Consumes data from relational databases and
web services
Read-only; no updates out of the box
Requires Enterprise Edition of MOSS
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Bring business data into SharePoint using web
parts
Link business data to list items
Augment back-end application functionality
Search
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Application
Entity
Action
Method
Association
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Actions bridge the gap between SharePoint
and the backend application
Actions are links, therefore they can be
whatever you want
◦ Custom Web Part Page
◦ Custom ASP.NET application
◦ InfoPath form
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List
Item
Related List
Actions
Item Builder
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BDC Applications are just XML; you can create
apps in notepad
BDC Meta Man ($1,200)
◦ Includes web parts for KPIs, mapping business data,
and displaying business data in a calendar
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BDC Definition Editor (free with SharePoint
SDK)
BDC Snippets in Visual Studio
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Define method to return a list of crawlable
entity IDs
For incremental crawling, you also need to
return the last modified date of the entity
Crawled properties are those returned in your
BDC application
Mapped properties are available in the search
experience (e.g. “lastname:smith”)
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Once your application is created…
◦ Add a content source with type of Business Data
◦ Defined mapped properties
◦ Create Search Scope
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Security must be treated specially when doing
search because items are already indexed
This is done through “security trimming”
The back-end system must expose some
method of checking access on an entity
The BDC will call this method at query time to
ensure security is up to date
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Access BDC functions like get lists and find
specific
Perform administrative functions
Develop custom search experiences for
business data
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SAP
Siebel
Dynamics
AutoDesk
Rockwell Software
Many more...
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MSDN: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/enus/library/ms563661.aspx