The Business Data List Web Part lets you choose an entity from the catalog
and display all instances of that entity in the back-end data source. It lets
you filter the query on the backend data based on the FilterDescriptors that
are in the ADF file. You can also control the output by using a custom Extensible
Style Language (XSL) style sheet. In our example, the Web Part displays the
data in the section at the bottom left of Figure
3. I configured the Web Part to return every Actor entity rather than perform
any filtering.
I can now use the Business Data Related Links Web Part to exploit the relationship
I set up between the Actors and Movies databases in the ADF. When you configure
the Related Links Web Part, you'll be able to see all the relationships that
are defined in the BDC. Therefore, by choosing the ActorToMovie relationship,
then using Web Part Connections to feed the selected actor into it, the movies
will be associated with the selected actor. (After you define an entity in the
catalog, it's accessible to many places, including a column in a list. So, when
I defined the custom list that you see displayed in Figure
3, I specified the Actor column as being of type Business Data.) Next, you'll
see a UI that lets you browse the catalog and select an entity that you want
to display in that column. Recall that in the example, the default return value
was the ActorName field so this is what's displayed. But you can choose to return
whichever properties of an entity that you want. The data that's retrieved through
the BDC is read-only, but it will be updated automatically when any of the writeable
columns in the item are updated. This functionality lets you group custom data
with data that exists elsewhere (and is probably currently only accessible through
an LOB application). How powerful is that?
When you combine all the new features that SharePoint Search offers with the
BDC, you can get similar results to what Web
Figure 2 shows. You can see a separate tabbed search results landing page
for actors with a pivot link for movies. When you select that link, you'll see
another search results page showing all the movies that actor has appeared in.
Getting Down to Business
Do you have any data locked up in back-end business applications that you'd
like to exploit? The BDC might be the answer. The BDC is a fantastic addition
to SharePoint technologies, even though it's still immature with few support
tools. I recommend you get familiar with the topics in the MOSS SDK. Armed with
that information and a detailed knowledge about the back-end data, you'll be
ready to fully exploit all your corporate LOB data.
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