Greetings all, it has been a LONG time since i have blogged but I want to make a renewed effort to do so more regularly.  I am going to start by bringing you my experiences with the new SharePoint 2010 product from Microsoft.  I want to start off by talking about one of the best areas they have brought to us and that is BCS or Business Connectivity Services

For those of you that have used the BDC in SharePoint 2007 this is essentially the evolution of that, and what an evolution it is. WOW. nice job MS  But first things first lets discuss some terminology.

•Business Connectivity Services = “Everything”

•Business Data Connectivity (BDC) = “The Guts” including , runtime, connectivity services

•External System= your back end stuff

•External Content Type (ECT) = a building block, entity.

•Model = XML file

•External List = newest type of SP list

So what does the above mean?

you have a connectivity layer to your external system that you can build in SharePoint designer or Visual Studio and host inside of SharePoint.  Then create external lists that can interact with that backend system.

Let me walk you through in a video how that works.

One of my key learning points in digging into BCS was the “identifier” option in SharePoint designer when building an external content type.  Apparently if you have a column marked as a Key in your SQL database, this gets automatically pulled through and marked as the Identifier.  But if you DON’T as i did not the first few times you have to pick one as your “Key” or “Identifier”  (see screen shot below)

Another item to keep in mind is that with external lists there are no event handlers that can or will fire, and there can be no workflow attached to them. (At least for now) :)

Go play around with some of this great BCS stuff and let me know what you think.  I will be digging in more and blogging more soon. (Promise)