At last week’s SPTech Conference, developers had many opportunities to explore the new features and integration aspects of SharePoint 2010. Forums on integration will continue after the conference throughout the developer community with key topics to consider moving forward.
SharePoint 2010 integration capabilities are among the most promising new feature areas for developers to build on. Capability improvements in the new version include workflow integration, Office 2010 application integration and improvements to the Business Data Catalog – now renamed as Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to better represent the new capabilities.
The advances to the BCS are changing the game, and every software developer needs to know about them to harness the benefits. These new opportunities for developers come from strong customer demand to show line-of-business data from disparate back-end systems within SharePoint sites. While SharePoint excels at allowing users to create and manipulate unstructured data for collaboration, there is also a need to share structured data from existing back-end systems. Business Connectivity Services (BCS) provide for this and -- once data is available to SharePoint -- can be manipulated with the regular SharePoint list user interface. BCS can also be used as lookup data in other SharePoint document libraries and lists and can be indexed for SharePoint Search. Another exciting aspect of BCS is that it can be synchronized offline with the SharePoint Workspace application and other Office Client Applications, such as Outlook and Word.
New features in BCS include the addition of write-back capability -- as BDC was read only -- making the base functionality available in all SharePoint products. This provides comprehensive tooling in SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010, extending use of External Content Types to Office 2010 applications and integrating with SharePoint 2010’s new Claims Based Authentication. Using BCS requires the creation of an External Content Type, which defines the schema for external data, method of access and authentication requirements.
Developers can create an External Content Type in three ways. SharePoint Designer 2010 allows for the creation of External Content Types for SQL Database connections and for Web Services. Visual Studio 2010 allows for the creation of External Content Types in .NET code for any data that is accessible with .NET. Using .NET means External Content Types can encapsulate business rules, perform schema modifications from the back end and use the wide variety of protocols and transports available to .NET developers, such as the WCF Adapter Framework. Best of all, the tools don’t require manual XML configuration.
With great tools, several options to create External Content Types and many ways to use them, we expect integration to be a valuable part of any website created with SharePoint2010. When users combine the structured data from back-end systems with unstructured data from SharePoint’s collaboration features, the result is a product capable of solving many business challenges. As developers delve further into integration topics this year, there will be numerous opportunities to exchange knowledge of best practices. It will be exciting to participate in the conversation.
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