Chapter 2: Burrowing into Business Connectivity Services

In This Chapter

Getting familiar with the Business Connectivity Services terminology

Understanding the Business Connectivity Services architecture

Managing Business Connectivity Services by using Central Administration

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is the evolution of the Business Data Catalog that was introduced in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Business Connectivity Services allows you to easily work with information stored in your back-end line-of-business applications directly from SharePoint and Microsoft Office. For example, if you have a custom solution that you developed in-house that stores its data in an Oracle database, you can connect your SharePoint 2010 environment to that system so that users can work with the Oracle data directly from SharePoint in much the same way they would a SharePoint list. You’re no longer confined to the read-only view of your external data from SharePoint, now you can both view and also update your external data directly from SharePoint. The read/write capability is only the tip of the iceberg with respect to the improvements that BCS introduces.

Business Connectivity Services Overview

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is the new and improved version of the Business Data Catalog that ships with the SharePoint 2010 products and technologies. BCS brings external data into SharePoint and Office so that your users can interact with their data in the applications that ...

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