Beginning SharePoint® 2007: Building Team Solutions with MOSS 2007

12.3. Working with Web Parts and Lists in the BDC

Once you have defined an application in the BDC per the discussion in the last section, SharePoint users can access it from within interface elements, such as Web Parts and list columns. You discover how to work with these items in this section.

Chapter 7 discusses how important Web Parts are to a SharePoint site for displaying information users need to do their jobs. One of the Web Part groups introduced in that chapter was the Business Data group, which has a specialized set of Web Parts that interact and connect with one another so users have a rich reporting environment. The Business Data Web Parts give you a way to display business information on your SharePoint site and allow users to interact with it to filter and generate more information.

If you had a business application in the BDC that contained all your customer service information, you could use Web Parts to see a listing of customers, search for customer information, view customer details, or see a listing of orders related to a selected customer. All of this is possible using one or more of the following Web Parts:

• Business Data List Web Part: Allows you to display information from a business application related to a specific entity. This information may be based on a predefined filter so that users automatically see a list when viewing the Web Part, or it may be based on searches that the user conducts within the Web Part.

• Related Business Data List Web Part: Connects ...