Hi
All of us that have used SharePoint 2007 also know the BDC and how much it was missing functionality. Now in SharePoint 2010 Microsoft have upgraded the BDC and called it BCS.
The cornerstone of BCS is the concept of an external content type. Data in an organization can live in various back-end systems. An external content type is a content type available in SharePoint 2010 that describes the schema and data access capabilities of an external data source and its behavior within Office and SharePoint 2010. The external content type in BCS is the logical equivalent of what used to be called the Entity in BDC.
External Content Types:
An external content type is a reusable collection of metadata that defines a set of data from one or more external systems, the operations available on that data, and connectivity information related to that data. More details here.
Business Connectivity Services can connect to the following types of external data:
- SQL Server Databases
- SAP Applications
- Web Services – including Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web Services
- SharePoint based web sites
- Third party applications
Business Connectivity Services Architecture (BCS)
See very detailed examples of using BCS here.
How to configure and use BCS look at this very detailed and useful example here.
Best regards
Happy SharePoint 2010 explorer, Jacob
