An overview of BCS architecture ➤ ➤ Creating a BCS solution ➤ ➤ Service applications and BCS ➤ ➤ Design considerations for BCS solutions ➤ ➤ Upgrading the Business Data Catalog to BCS ➤
Trang 1Business Connectivity services
in sharePoint 2010
WhAt’S IN thIS chAPtER?
An overview of BCS architecture
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Creating a BCS solution
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Service applications and BCS
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Design considerations for BCS solutions
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Upgrading the Business Data Catalog to BCS
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Business Connectivity Services (BCS) represent a comprehensive set of capabilities that integrate and connect SharePointServer 2010 applications with data that resides in exter-nal systems BCS, which is based on a set of services and features included in SharePoint Foundation 2010, provides out-of-the-box support that simplifi es the development of solu-tions that use external data and services BCS is a major enhancement to its predecessor in SharePoint 2007, the Business Data Catalog (BDC) Using BCS, you can design and build solutions that extend SharePoint collaboration capabilities to include external business data and the processes that are associated with that data
BCS uses a new concept in SharePoint 2010 called external content types (ECTs), which should
not be confused with the enterprise content types mentioned in other chapters ECTs are a content type that is based on external data Just as with any content type, they are associated with lists In
this case, the list is called an external list, and it provides the viewing and storage mechanism for
the external data
BCS solutions can be created using SharePoint Designer 2010 or Visual Studio 2010 Which tool
is best depends on both the skill set of the creator and the features and complexity requirements
of the solution For example, you can create a BCS solution that uses Outlook 2010 to manage
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customer information that resides in a CRM system This solution would use an external content type created with SharePoint Designer 2010, and an external list created using the web browser The data
in the external list can be taken offline into Outlook as a set of contacts Updates to the contact list can be made in Outlook and synchronized with the external data source Many types of BCS solutions can be created without writing any NET code, which fosters the development of such solutions and encourages those without professional development skills to get involved BCS also includes a runtime environment in which solutions that include external data are managed and executed
This chapter provides a BCS introduction and overview in order to familiarize you with its capabilities Because these capabilities are both wide and deep, expect to see entire books dedicated to BCS coming along soon
cAPAbILItY OvERvIEW
BCS is an enhancement to the functionality that was provided in the SharePoint 2007 Business Data Catalog The BDC was a first-generation technology for connecting SharePoint to external data Before looking at the specific capabilities of the SharePoint 2010 BCS, let’s review some of the gaps in the BDC:
The BDC did not provide the capability to truly integrate external data into SharePoint 2007
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BDC data could be displayed using four out-of-the-box Web Parts and by adding a column
to a list with the Business Data data type This provided a copy of the specific data
The BDC data was essentially read-only, unless you wanted to write the custom NET code
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necessary to perform the write-back capability External data was displayed using a number
of different out-of-the-box Web Parts, but there was no direct provision for updating the back-end data system
There was no support for integrating external data with Office desktop client applications like
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Outlook, Word, or Excel The BDC provided integration with SharePoint Server 2007 To provide client integration, you would need to create a web service that would access the BDC Object Model and then the client would interact with the web service to surface the data This approach would work, but it required a lot of custom NET development, and there was no capability to manipulate the data once in the client, such as a client object model, which also had to be developed
BDC content could not be taken offline or used in a disconnected fashion
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The BDC did not support streaming BLOB content This caused problems when the BDC
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was used to index content that was contained in SQL Server and stored as BLOBs
The BCS represents a second-generation technology for connecting to external systems, and specifically addresses all of the aforementioned gaps:
BCS uses content types and external lists to integrate external data in SharePoint 2010
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SharePoint 2010 features and services that utilize list data can utilize the external list data
as well
Trang 3BCS provides complete CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) operation capability on data
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returned from external systems
BCS provides direct integration of external data with client applications like Outlook 2010,
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Word 2010, and SharePoint Workspace 2010 This integration does not require any custom programming
External list data can be taken offl ine in Outlook 2010 and SharePoint Workspace 2010 The
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external data source can be updated with changes made in the offl ine environment, and in general the two environments can remain synchronized
BCS provides the capability to index and search content stored in BLOBs Specifi cally, this
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requires defi ning a method in the XML access model, defi ning a content source with the ECT, and having the necessary IFilters installed for the specifi c fi le types of interest
BCS provides a more extensive set of authentication mechanisms for connecting to the
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nal systems and retrieving data This also includes greater control over access to the external data once it has been retrieved
BCS capability is provided by SharePoint Foundation 2010, whose predecessor is Windows SharePoint Services version 3, and by SharePoint Server 2010 Table 24-1 summarizes which BCS functionality
is available in SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server 2010 SharePoint Server 2010 function-ality also includes that provided by SharePoint Foundation Details about each of the features are discussed later in the chapter
Just as you saw in SharePoint 2007, there are two different types of client access
licenses (CALs) for SharePoint Server 2010: Standard and Enterprise These
different licenses entitle the user to different types of BCS features Table 24-1
and this chapter in general do not discuss the licensing requirements for utilizing
these features Administrators should consult a licensing specialist for details.
tAbLE 24-1: BCS Functionality for SharePoint Foundation and Server 2010
SharePoint Foundation 2010 business data connectivity Service — Manages and provides the
storage and retrieval capability
External lists and External data columns — Enables the display of
external data
bdc connectors — The actual binary logic that communicates with
the data store Custom connectors can be created and made available using the
connector Framework
continues
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SharePoint Server 2010 Search capability — To index and access external data
Secure Store Service — Stores access credentials to the external data External data Web Parts — Display external data
user Profiles — For managing and displaying external data Workflow capability — For using external data
Rich client Integration — Integrates external data with Office 2010
client applications like Outlook and Word
ARchItEctuRE
The BCS architecture consists of service applications that manage and provide the connectivity to external systems; client and server runtime applications, which deliver the capability to the server and Office desktop clients; external content types, which provide the XML description that governs how to access the store and what to retrieve; and the built-in connectors, which contain the actual programming logic that communicates with the data store Each of these architectural components
is discussed in the following sections
Service Applications
BCS utilizes two service applications, just as you’ve seen other SharePoint 2010 functionality use the service application architecture These services are called the Business Data Connectivity Service (BDCS) and the Secure Store Service (SSS)
Business Data Connectivity service
The BDCS provides a means for storing, accessing, and utilizing external data Specifically, this includes external content types (ECTs) and related objects This service provides connectivity capability to several different types of external systems, and there is out-of-the-box support for the following data sources:
Databases
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Web services
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.NET Framework assemblies
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Custom connectors
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This new service can be compared to the Business Data Catalog in SharePoint Server 2007, but there are some big differences One of the differences is that this service is provided by a new service archi-tecture, which is available in SharePoint Foundation 2010 Previously, in order to use the Business Data Catalog, you had to have SharePoint Server 2007 installed; this functionality was not available
tAbLE 24-1 (continued)
Trang 5in Windows SharePoint Services version 3 From a licensing perspective, your users had to have the Enterprise client access license
In SharePoint 2010, BCS functionality is provided by SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server
2010 The specific functionality provided by each was discussed earlier in the “Capability Overview” section Note that this service also provides support for custom connectors, which the BDC did not These connectors are discussed later in the section “Connectors and the Connector Framework.” BDCS is implemented as a service application in SharePoint Foundation 2010 Like other SharePoint
2010 services discussed in previous chapters, there is an associated service application and proxy called Business Data Connectivity You can view this service application and proxy from the Manage Service Application web page in Central Administration Multiple instances of the BDCS can exist in the same farm, each with a unique set of administrators if necessary, and an instance of the BDCS can be shared across farms The BDCS uses ECTs to define the connectivity and information to be retrieved
ECTs define quite a bit of information They are discussed in their own section a bit later, but the following is a brief summary of their contents:
A named set of fields in the external data This could include things like Customer, Products,
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and so on
The specific CRUD operations that will be used for interacting with the external data system
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Connectivity information that BCS solutions will use to connect the external content type to
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the external system
External content types are stored in a dedicated BDCS database, which by default is called Bdc_ Service_DB and can be viewed using SQL Server Management Studio
secure store service
As you saw in Chapter 20 with PerformancePoint Services, the SSS securely stores credentials for external systems and then associates those credential sets with identities of individuals or groups The SSS replaces the Single Sign-on capability that was available in SharePoint Server 2007 This service enables the BCS solution to authenticate users and groups on external data sources It also enables the same user or group to have different user accounts and credentials for the different external systems compared to their enterprise log-in credentials
For example, suppose John Doe logs into SharePoint Server 2010 using his enterprise username and password, and he uses a different set of credentials for logging into the corporate financial system Using SSS, Mr Doe’s financial system access credentials can be stored with his user profile The ben-efit of this is that when Mr Doe uses a BCS solution from within SharePoint Server 2010 to access data from the financial system, SharePoint server obtains his credentials from the SSS and provides
a single sign-on mechanism Thus, this eliminates the need for Mr Doe to manually log into the financial application You can also configure the SSS so that multiple users can access an external system by using a single set of credentials
Another potential issue that the SSS can solve when accessing external systems is the double hop
problem This occurs because a SharePoint web page or Web Part tries to access resources that are located on a server other than the web server You can use SSS to map the user’s account with his
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credentials for the external store In the terminology of the SSS, external data stores are referred to
as target applications A target application needs to be confi gured in the SSS in order for the BCS
solution to connect to and utilize the data
SSS credential sets are stored in a dedicated, secure database, which by default is called
Secure_Store_Service_DB The BDCS data and the SSS data are also cached on client comput-ers that are using the BCS solution For more information, see Chapter 20 and the discussion on PerformancePoint Services and SSS
For more information about the double hop problem, see http://support
.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;329986.
connectors and the connector Framework
BDCS provides connectivity to the external data It does this by utilizing ECTs and built-in connec-tors The ECTs provide the metadata description of the connectivity information, and the connector provides the actual binary logic to communicate with the data store External data that resides in a database such as SQL Server, Oracle, etc is accessed by using the appropriate ADO.NET database provider Data that doesn’t reside in a database but is accessible via web services is accessed using the Windows Communication Foundation connector for web services There is also a NET Framework Assembly connector for accessing NET assemblies All of these connectors are available out-of-the-box and don’t require any custom programming
For those data stores that don’t comply with either an ADO.NET provider or a web service, or access via the NET assembly connector, a custom connector can be built The custom connector would plug into the connector framework, and then it could be utilized by the BDCS to provide access to the data source The process for creating a custom connector is beyond the scope of this chapter and this book, but interested readers should begin by understanding the differences between the custom connector and the NET assembly connector Learn more about this at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ library/ee554911(v=office.14).aspx
bdc client and Server Runtime
Different runtimes provide the necessary capability to access and utilize external data One run-time exists on the SharePoint server, and the other exists on the client computer Together, they deliver the server functionality to the desktop client These different runtimes are discussed in the following sections
server runtime
The Business Data Connectivity Server runtime understands how to reach into the back-end store and connect to data based on the external content types defi ned within the content type store The server runtime exists on the SharePoint 2010 web front-end servers, and it utilizes two shared services: the BDCS and the SSS, discussed previously It uses information from these services to access external
Trang 7systems and execute operations on the external systems for access by web browsers The server run-time provides the connectivity to external sources such as SQL Server and other relational databases, web services, and custom data connectors SharePoint websites display external data in the web
browser using Business Data Web Parts and SharePoint external lists
The runtime also contains a data cache called the metadata cache, which provides caching of the
runtime BDCS data This data can be encrypted for additional security if necessary The runtime also provides the mechanism for clients to synchronize with the BDCS data and SSS data
Client runtimes
Two different runtimes provide BCS functionality on the client: the Business Data Connectivity Client Runtime (client runtime), and the Office Integration Client Runtime (integration runtime) These run-times are installed along with the installation of SharePoint Workspace 2010, Word 2010, and Outlook
2010 desktop client applications The integration runtime integrates with the client runtime to surface external data and functionality to the desktop client The client runtime is a connector between the server runtime and the integration runtime
The client runtime provides integration with the server runtime This connectivity between the client and the server occurs via the client-side cache, which contains the BDCS data and SSS data to connect
to and execute operations on external systems for access by supported desktop clients The client-side cache is periodically refreshed to ensure that data is synchronized with the BDCS and SSS data This cache provides the capability to take solutions offline and then update the server when reconnected From a technology point of view, the client-side cache leverages the SQL Server Compact database as its durable store This should provide a strong sense of reliability to developers because it leverages proven and widely adopted technologies
The SSS is also accessible from client applications through the Client Secure Store Service, which enables end users to configure their client mappings in the credential database The client runtime also supports connecting to SQL Server and other relational databases, web services, and custom data connectors
External content types
External content types (ECTs) are a critical component of the BCS architecture and functionality Recall that content types were introduced in SharePoint 2007 Content types provide a mechanism for standardizing and reusing metadata information for a specific type of content, as well as asso-ciating such functions as workflows and policies with the content We will not review content types
in this chapter, but for those who may need a refresher of the types of capabilities available to con-tent types, you can browse to the Site Concon-tent Types web page from the Site Settings page of your SharePoint website, and select a content type such as Document On the Document content type web page, you can review all the different aspects of content types
What is important to us in this chapter are ECTs, which are an extension of the content type concept to external data Specifically, they contain connectivity information for accessing external data, specifica-tions for the type of data to be accessed, and acspecifica-tions that you want to apply to external data An ECT
is defined using XML markup This is very similar to how an entity was defined with the Business Data
Catalog in SharePoint 2007, so you may hear and read the terms ECT and entity used interchangeably,
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but the ECT has additional functionality, as you will see In general, you can consider an ECT a data source Using the ECT as a data source, you can view the external data on the server using an external list, an external data column, and external data Web Parts These different approaches to viewing ECT data in SharePoint 2010 are described in Table 24-2
tAbLE 24-2: Viewing External Content Type Data in SharePoint 2010
External List An external list is a new type of SharePoint list that displays data
using the ECT as the data source This provides direct integration of the external data in SharePoint so it can be manipulated using CRUD operations just like any other SharePoint list data, and the list and external data can be kept synchronized External lists can be taken offline using Outlook 2010 and SharePoint Workspace 2010 Unlike standard SharePoint lists, external list data is not stored in the con-tent database, but remains in the external data store Also, external lists do not have all the standard features of regular lists, such as ver-sioning, check-in, check-out, workflows, and content type association External Data Column The Business Data list column type introduced in SharePoint 2007
has been renamed the External Data Column in SharePoint 2010 This adds a single column of information from the ECT to standard SharePoint lists Unlike the external list, External Data Columns pro-vide all the other features of standard SharePoint 2010 lists External Data Web Parts Just as SharePoint 2007 provided Web Parts that displayed data
from the BDC, SharePoint 2010 provides five Web Parts that do not require any custom programming to use and display BCS data on SharePoint 2010 web pages: External Data List, External Data Item, External Data Item Builder, External Data Related List, and External Data Connectivity Filter Web Part These Web Parts are read-only and
do not provide write-back capability to the external data
Security
BCS provides extensive authentication and authorization capability for accessing external systems and consuming data BCS security will govern access to external data in a wide variety of scenarios, which can be categorized by the tool or application desiring access to the data:
Web browser
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Office client
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Custom application
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A comprehensive discussion of BCS security is beyond the scope of this one chapter, as it would involve the overall security architecture, both client and server, which authentication modes are
Trang 9available for external content types, the type and options for configuring permissions on objects, and the specific steps to configuring authentication and authorization Interested administrators are encouraged to review the information referenced in Table 24-3 An understanding of this informa-tion is not required to get starting using BCS, and readers can complete the hands-on exercise in the section “Creating a BCS Solution” without this knowledge
tAbLE 24-3: BCS Security Topics and References
Planning SharePoint 2010
Authentication
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/
cc262350(office.14).aspx
ee661743(office.14).aspx.
ms566523(office.14).aspx
ms497953(office.14).aspx
permissions-in-business-connectivity-services.aspx
cREAtINg A bcS SOLutION
In this section, you’ll create an example solution that illustrates the concepts of external content types and external lists BCS solutions are created using SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 These solutions can be packaged as a Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) package that is
eas-ily distributed to SharePoint Workspace, Word, and Outlook 2010 client desktops by leveraging the ClickOnce capabilities in the.NET Framework BCS also exposes APIs to extend solution packaging
to target additional clients A BCS solution can be created using SharePoint Designer 2010, an external data source, and SharePoint Server 2010 The following exercise creates a BCS solution that requires the following:
The Business Data Connectivity Service application and proxy must be created and started
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This can be checked by browsing to the Manage Service Applications web page in Central Administration A service application instance can be created using the wizard as part of the installation, as shown in Chapter 4 A new service application instance can also be created manually or by using PowerShell The manual approach was demonstrated in Chapter 20 and discussed in Chapter 7, so readers are encouraged to review this information if necessary SQL Server 2008 must be installed on the same physical server as SharePoint Server 2010,
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including an instance of the Northwind database The Northwind database can be
down-loaded and installed from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143221.aspx
If SQL Server is installed on a server other than the SharePoint server, then you need to create