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Creating Solutions with the Business Data Catalog (BDC) Session Materials

What a fun week it has been so far at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference ! I just finished presenting my Creating Solutions with the Business Data Catalog (BDC) session and I'm looking forward to presenting my Creating Solutions with the MOSS Single Sign On Service session tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who came to my session today! All the code and materials for today's session are now available here . Enjoy! Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Graficar Informacion desde BDC (WebPart)

En el dia de ayer, me solicitaban mayor informacion acerca de la posibilidad de graficar datos obtenidos con el BDC de SharePoint. Y aqui esta la solucion, si bien es un WebPart Comercial (400U$S) hay otras alternativas adicionales como la de Dundas Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks
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Be Careful with the BDC "hurricane" (update) button...

When you add a Business Data Catalog (BDC) column to a custom list, in the list view column headings you will see an icon with two green circular arrows next to the BDC column - it looks a little like the symbol for a hurricane. This is the "BDC Update" (or "refresh" button). You need to be very careful with this button. When you click this button, it updates the BDC values in your list with the latest values from the BDC for every list item . Why is this necessary? When you use a BDC column in a list, the BDC-related values that you pull in along with the BDC value you enter are actually stored in the list and are not "live" values from the BDC. They are stored at the time you save the list item (create or update). So these values can become "stale" if they change in the database behind the BDC entity. For example, Let's say I add a BDC value "Vendor" to my list for vendors from my back end ERP system. I also pull in the vendor's name, address, and phone number. I add a list item and select a vendor from the BDC. It brings along the vendor's name, address, and phone number and copies of these values get stored in the list. A month later, the vendor's phone number is changed in the ERP system. However, that list item will still show the old phone number, even though the BDC is pulling data directly from the ERP system. It will not automatically update existing list items with the new value (but new list items will...
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Quick Tip: BDC ADF Version Numbers Are Your Friend

If you're hand-coding ADF files and doing a lot of code/import/test cycles, use the version number to make your life easier. I hate to admit it, but until this week, I was always deleting the ADF and re-importing it. This would break my business data Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks
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BDC does not play well with AAM

The Business Data Catalog user interface (in BDC web parts and List View web parts) does not play well with Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) in MOSS. When you add a BDC column to a custom list, you can check the option to link the BDC value to the profile page. When you display the items in the list in a List View or in a BDC web part, the BDC value will be a hyperlink that takes you to the "profile page" for that BDC value. You can also drop down the context menu to the left of the BDC value to display the profile page. This is an example of the profile page that displays: Now, if you note in the above example of the profile page, the URL shows " devmoss2007 ", which is the actual hostname of my development SharePoint server. I can view the profile page by either clicking on the BDC value or dropping down the BDC context menu and choosing View Profile. Now let's try the same thing using Alternate Access Mapping (AAM), where we associate a different name with the MOSS server. In this case, I am going to map the name " devmoss " to "devmoss2007". This is done in Central Administration -> Operations -> Global Configuraiton - Alternate access mappings. Now I will go to the same list, but use the AAM name in the URL instead of the actual hostname of the server. Now when I click on the BDC value represented as a hyperlink: Instead of presenting the "profile" page, it goes to this URL and does nothing : It appears that the BDC...
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Solution: BDC Picker Shows Only One Column Of Results

In my on-going attempts at providing a more useful lookup column using BDC , I hit a wall with the BDC picker. If you haven't see it, the BDC picker is similar to a people picker except that it works with columns of type "business data" Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks
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Export BDC(Business Data Catalog) Data to Excel

One of the down parts in Business Data Catalog is lack of export the data. Also, most of the folks expecting this functionality as following thread. http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2201460&SiteID=17 . The solution is writing an HttpHandler to do the job. The nice thing about using the HttpHandler approach is that it pretty much did one thing for me: it took care of transforming the data into a format that Excel can open.How I actually gathered my data was a task that could be offloaded to some other data access component in the application, and the differentiating query values could be retrieved by using QueryString property variables. Using QueryString property variables makes reusing the solution quite easy. I've create an GenericInvoker MethodInstance to fetch the records as follows < Method Name = " ExportPlants " > < Properties > …….. </ Parameter > </ Parameters > < MethodInstances > < MethodInstance Name = " ExportToExcel " Type = " GenericInvoker " ReturnParameterName = " ExportPlantsExcel " /> </ MethodInstances > </ Method > protected override void CreateChildControls() { lbExcel = new HyperLink (); lbExcel.Text = "Export To Excel" ; lbExcel.NavigateUrl = SPContext .Current.Web.Url + @"/Export.ashx?format=excel&instance=ExcelInstance" ; lbExcel.Load += new EventHandler (lbExcel_Load); lbExcel.ImageUrl = "/_layouts/images...
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Solution to BDC ADF Import Failure: "The following error occurred:"

I was once again crafting BDC ADF files by hand (so that I can build up my " get off my lawn! " cred) and hit this lovely error: "Application definition import failed. The following error occurred:" As you can see, there's an error Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks
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BDC Seems a Viable Replacement For Lookups

We have a business scenario where we need to link two documents libraries via a common "document ID" field. We often use a lookup column to implements links like this. There are several drawbacks to lookup columns, three of which are: Only one Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks
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Solution to BDC Import Error: "Could not load Type described by TypeDescriptor's TypeName ..."

I've been working with BDC today, coding ADF files by hand and generating myself some errors. One such error: Application definition import failed. The following error occurred: Could not load Type described by TypeDescriptor's TypeName. Parameter Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks
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SharePoint and MySQL

SharePoint and MySQL Integrating SharePoint with MySQL using Business Data Catalog T his is another article of the same series that has been continuing for the last couple of weeks. Yep! SharePoint and the Business Data Catalog! Following are the recent articles that cover the SharePoint and the Business Data Catalog "Definition Editor Tool": 1. Working with Business Data Column 2. Importing BDC Data into SharePoint 3. Using Business Data Catalog Definition Editor 4. Few Issues With Microsoft...( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Importing BDC Data into SharePoint

Importing BDC Data into SharePoint Level: Beginner As compared to the first part , this article is short and contains information on how to import the definition file into the SharePoint. 1. Go to SharePoint Central Administration and open SSP defined for the site where you want to display BDC data. Figure 1: Select SSP in SharePoint Central Administration 2. Click "Import application definition" (Business Data Catalog section). 3. Click "Browse" and select the definition file...( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Few Issues with Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor

Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor is a great tool that has made creating application definition file very easy. This tool is available in the latest SharePoint Server 2007 SDK . After installing the SDK, you can install this tool by running setup.exe from the following folder on your server: LocalDrive:\Program Files\2007 Office System Developer Resources\Tools\BDC Definition Editor I notice there are some issues with this first release of the tool. Of course, it works fine with the...( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

SharePoint Lists Synchronizer

Every once in a while you will run into a customer that wants to synchronize some data from LOB system to SharePoint/WSS. Microsoft solution for this problem is Business data catalog . It is a great feature but it is only available in SharePoint Enterprise which might be too expensive for WSS or SharePoint Standard customers. More on SharePoint licensing... Guys from Omnisys developed a great SharePoint add-on solution. It allows you to populate your SharePoint lists with data from your LOB system, and to synchronize data between lists. Learn more… Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks
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SharePoint 2007 : BDC - Utiliser les donnees dans une liste

Ce post fait partie d'une série d'articles dédiés à la présentation du BDC (Business Data Catalog) ou Catalogue de Données Métier dans SharePoint 2007. Cette fonctionnalité, plus complexe à maitriser qu'elle n'y parait, n'est disponible qu'à partir de... Mirrored on SharePoint Blogs Posted on SharePoint Blogs...( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks
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