Programming SharePoint Business Connectivity Services

Total Running Time: 180 min

SharePoint Server 2010’s Business Connectivity Services (BCS) greatly enhance the capabilities the Business Data Catalog (BDC) provided in SharePoint 2007. The BCS provides a wide array of connectivity options to external data sources and complimentary components that integrate with the SharePoint platform and Office applications. Once you have a clear understanding of the components which make up the BCS, the available data access options, and the extensibility points, it is easier than ever to build complex line of business applications based on the SharePoint platform. For the past several months the instructor for this class has been heavily researching the BCS with the Microsoft Patterns & Practices group to create the first release of the SharePoint 2010 Patterns & Practice Guidance from Microsoft, which focuses on execution, data, and client models.

In this class, you’ll learn what components make up the BCS and how it works. You’ll learn how to create line of business applications with external content types and external lists with SharePoint Designer 2010. You’ll learn how to configure the BCS to authenticate to external data sources, including how to use the Secure Store Service. You’ll also learn how to create associations between BCS entities and how to use the BDC Web Parts to navigate data defined in external content types. You’ll learn how to consume external data sources including databases, web/WCF services and text files.

A large portion of the class is dedicated to advanced data access concepts including how to aggregate several data sources into a single external content type, how to access binary data and stream it back to SharePoint, and how to consume complex data types (nested data). During this portion of the class you’ll learn how to create BCS Models and .NET Assembly Connectors with Visual Studio 2010.

The class includes a comprehensive section covering how to create advanced user interfaces with the SharePoint Client Object Model, the BCS runtime APIs, custom Web Parts and Silverlight applications. This portion of the class describes how to work with the BCS within the sandbox and how to index and search for external data with the BCS.

Finally, the class wraps up with a discussion of BCS limitations and workarounds and how to automate the deployment and configuration of BCS components and the SSS.

Session 1: Foundational BCS Concepts and Components

Session 2: Advanced Data Access Concepts and Components

Session 3: Advanced User Interface Concepts and Components