BCS in SharePoint step by step

Business Connectivity Services are a set of services and features that provide a way to connect SharePoint solutions to sources of external data and to define external content types that are based on that external data. BCS (Business Connectivity Services) is the successor of BDC (Business Data Catalog), but we have great features available in BCS.This article contains a step by step guide to design an External Content Type Before beginning, you should have the following:

• Access to SharePoint 2010 Central Administration, including the business data connectivity service.
• Access to SharePoint Designer.
• A SharePoint 2010 web application with a site collection (blank site template).
• Access to Microsoft SQL Server. For our examples we will consider that the SQL server is installed locally.­
• A sample database for Microsoft SQL Server

Open the Site in SharePoint Designer

Click on External Content Types

Click on External Content in Ribbon to create new content type

Specify the values for Name and Display Name, Click on “discover external data sources and define options.”

In the Data Connections Screen, Click on Add Connections

Select the Data Connection type, here I am trying to connect to “Adventure works” SQL Database.

In the next screen specify your connection settings to the database and click OK.

Now the screen will list the database and its tables.






Choose the required table and right click to select the operations to be performed on the list.

In Wizard choose the input parameter fields.

In Filters section, you can specify the filter for records.

Now the External Content Field will be looks like below with operations, fields & parameters.

Click on Create Lists & Form for the External Content type in Ribbon.

Specify the list details, if you need to have Info Path forms for list forms, select “Create Info Path Form”

Now Set Permission for Business Data Connectivity Services in Central Admin:

Go to Central Administration -> Application Management ->Manage Service Applications ->Business Data Connectivity Service

Select the Store and Click on Set Metadata store permissions.

Select the User and choose appropriate permissions.

Open the list in site.

Now the data can be accessed from SharePoint list.