In SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services (BCS) enables integration with back end systems. Business Connectivity Services includes a set of presentation features, a connectivity framework and tooling within SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio that enable developers and ITPros to connect to external data and services and to surface this data in SharePoint and Office 2010. This unit provides an overview of the BCS capabilities and usage in Office 2010.
Hands-On Labs
Business Connectivity Services Lab
Now with both C# and VB code samples! In this lab, you will explore the use of Business Connectivity Services to connect external data to SharePoint. You will use two different tools, SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 to build the definitions necessary to connect SharePoint to external data. Once the connections are established, you will extend a simple Outlook Form Region to use the external data offline using a SharePoint Workspace 2010 cache.
Videos
Business Connectivity Services
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is new to SharePoint 2010 and enables integration with back end, LOB systems. This video introduces the BCS architecture and External Content Types, which are the cornerstone of BCS.
Creating BCS Applications
This video drills into creating simple no-code BCS solutions using the out-of-box capabilities of SharePoint Designer 2010 to more advanced, complex, custom BCS solutions using Visual Studio. SharePoint Workspace 2010 on the client allows BCS provided data to be cached and operated on by the Office clients when both online and offline. SharePoint Workspace automatically handles all data synchronization.