Working with BCS and External List in SharePoint 2010

In this blog, I will explain about BCS (Business Connectivity Services) and how we can implement BCS in SharePoint 2010.

What is BCS?

BCS stands for Business Connectivity Services.

1.Create a table in SQL.
2.Open SharePoint designer. From the navigation pane select “External Content Types”.
3.From the New tab in top ribbon click on “External Content Type”. Now your page will look like below screen.

4.Click on “New external content type” next to Name and enter the name.
5.Click on “Click here to discover external data sources and define operations” next to External System.
6.From Below screen click on “Add connection”.
7.From “External Data Source Type Selection” choose SQL server. See Below screen.

8.In below screen enter local host in Database server, in the database name, enter your DB name.the third field is optional.
9.Click OK.

10.Right click on table name and select “New Read Item Operation”

11.Click on “Next”
12.From below screen select your primary key and from properties pane, check the option “Map to identifier”.

13.Do same in next page and click on Finish.
14.Again right click on the Table name and select “New Read List Operation”. And repeat the steps 11,12 and 13.
15.Open your SharePoint site.
16.From Site Action click on create list.
17.From list type select “External List”. And click create.

18.Fill the details in respective input controls.

19.If you know the exact name then enter external source name in “External Content Type” which is last input in above screen and click OK.
20.Else click on the 2nd icon next to “External Content Type” text box. Below screen will open.

21.Select your external data source and click OK.
22.Again click OK. Now your list will be populated on the screen.