SharePoint Saturday New York 7/31/2010 Deck by Fabian Williams delivered.

1. Getting to know Business Connectivity Services (BCS) Using Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Saturday New York Presenter: Fabian Williams

2. Twitter: @fabianwilliams Blog (old): http://FabianGWilliams.wordpress.com Blog (new): http://www.sharepointfabian.com/blog Web Site: http://www.adotob.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fabianwilliams Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/fabiangwilliams Fabian is a Technical Lead and SharePoint Architect for CDW Advanced Technology Services SharePoint Practice. He is based out of Herndon, Va. Prior to CDW, Fabian was the CTO for WING, Inc. Recently, he was the Chief Internet Developer for the Department of Defense's Global Emerging Infections System and a Sales Engineer at Citrix Incorporated

3. Agenda What is BCS & Why do you want to know it What problems does BCS Solve Our Scenario, Dry Run and Illustrated Gotchas! Demo Inspect the LOB System Crack Open Visual Studio Model our BCS Operation Code our Solution Publish our Solution Permissioning Consume our External Content Type Q & A

4. What is Business Connectivity Services What Problems does it Solve Formerly Named Business Data Catalog Read/Write Access to External Data Create No-Code and Code Solutions to LOB Systems Island of Information Challenges Overhead for IT to Service Requests Managing Security, Auditing, Connectivity Complex/Multiple UI for LOB Systems Timely Access to Data Searchability

5. What is Baked Into the Product – Bag of Tricks so to speak SharePoint Server 2010 Office 2010 Secure Store Service External Data Search Rich Client Extensions BDC Client Runtime External Data Web Parts Profile Pages SharePoint Foundation 2010 External List External Data Column Business Data Connectivity Service

7. Use custom code to integrate data into any Office app

8. Business logic in forms

9. Create reusable components (UI parts, ECTs, actions)

10. Customize

11. InfoPath forms

12. Workflow

13. Web Part Pages

14. Outlook taskpane and ribbon

15. Out-of-box

16. Surface data in External Lists

17. Connect those lists to Outlook, SPW

18. External Data ColumnsIntermediate Simple Advanced NO CODE* CODE SharePoint Designer SharePoint SDK Visual Studio Advanced Developer Developer Power User Blog: http://fabiangwilliams.wordpress.com Twitter: @fabianwilliams

19. Gotcha # 1 Make sure that you choose .NET Framework 3.5 when you are setting up your Project so you get the correct templates

20. Gotcha #2 – but more of a call out not a Gotcha If always been asked…”Can you do a BCS Solution as a Sandboxed Solution” .. The answer is NO… because the nature of Sandboxed Solution is that it does not go ANYWHERE beyond the SC and Content Database

21. Gotcha # 3 – again more of a Callout Under your BdcModel1, unless you plan to use the Entity1 Class i.e. you are creating your own object and plan to user the EntityService Class, go ahead and delete them in lieu of the one you will create yourself

22. Gotcha # 4 Ensure to change your Type Name for your “Read Item” Method List Entity so that your code will know from which type it inherits from to the Current Project and BDC Entity

23. Gotcha # 4 Ensure that your Rename your ‘Generic’ BCS Model, LOBSystem, LOB System Instances Name to something more representative of what you are doing. Why, For Nomenclature Reasons but more so for Namespace Reasons when using the External Content Types

24. Gotcha # 5 Ensure to set the ETC Permissions once you Deploy your solution; otherwise you will get the “Access is Denied by the BDC” error when you try to render your External List

25. Parting Knowledge/Disclaimer/ Managing Expectations Don’t be afraid of the 14-Root/Hive Log Files when you get Errors, the Correlation ID is your friend  and we may see some in todays LIVE demo… I have found that if you don’t have a Root Web in your Top Level Site Collection; lets say if you use just managed paths below it and you try to deploy a BCS Solution it says it cant find the Web Remember! You cannot update a View that affects Multiple Tables, consider this when you create an External Content Type that spans two tables via a View unless you meet certain requirements… http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/k625abw5(VS.80).aspx

26. Demo

27. Q & A