SharePoint Application Integration

Business Data Catalog: Overview

Business Data Catalog is a new business integration feature in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It is a shared service and it enables Office SharePoint Server 2007 to surface business data from back-end server applications. Business Data Catalog bridges the gap between the portal site and your business applications and enables your organization to bring in key data from various business applications to your Office SharePoint Server 2007 applications.

Business Data Catalog provides built-in support for displaying data from databases and Web services. That is, you can use Business Data Catalog to display data from other line-of-business (LOB) application via Web services or databases. To achieve this goal, Business Data Catalog provides homogeneous access to the underlying data sources with a metadata model that provides a consistent and simplified client object model. Business Data Catalog is the key infrastructural component around which the other Business Data features of Office SharePoint Server 2007 are built.

Business Data Web Parts

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes five default Business Data Web Parts: Business Data List, Business Data Item, Business Data Item Builder, Business Data Related List, and Business Data Actions. These Web Parts rely on the Business Data Catalog, and offer three main benefits:

• Reusability. These Web Parts are generic and reusable and can show any type of data (entity) registered in the Business Data Catalog.
• Connectability. These Web Parts support Web Part connections and make it easier to create Master-Detail applications. These Web Parts can also be integrated in dashboards.
• Customization. These Web Parts support WYSIWYG editing in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and can be customized using XSLT transformations.

Business Data in Lists

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a new list column type called Business Data that is available to SharePoint lists in Office SharePoint Server 2007. The Business Data column type enables users to add data from business applications registered in the Business Data Catalog to lists.

Business Data Actions

Actions are associated with entities in the Business Data Catalog. Actions bridge the gap between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and a native application user interface by providing a link back to the back-end data source. You can use Business Data Actions to build applications with write-back scenarios, such as a Customer Profile view that allows a user to update profile information directly in you LOB app. Actions are implemented as links, so you can also use actions to perform simple operations such as sending e-mail messages or opening a customer's home page.

Business Data Search

With the help of the Business Data Catalog, the Enterprise Search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 can gather, index, and offer full-text search on all business data (entity instances) from applications registered in the Business Data Catalog.

Business Data in User Profiles

Important personal data is often stored outside of the corporate directory. The Business Data Catalog allows you to bring data from such applications to user profiles. You could, for example, add a spouse's name or your Social Security number to the user profiles from an application registered in the Business Data Catalog. You can add fields from your business applications registered in Business Data Catalog in Central Administration or programmatically. The Business Data Catalog also provides a way to plug in the profile properties from the user profile store to the methods invoked in the back-end server applications.

About our Expert SharePoint Application Integration Professionals

When you engage with our Application Integration Consultants, you can rest assured your organization will effectively collect data from different application sources to provide you with a consolidated data view. We have attained SharePoint Certified Gold Level Partner and use Best Implementation Practices. Our highly-skilled SharePoint Application Integration Experts have acquired extensive experience after having integrated application data for numerous clients. Give us a call at 866-844–5055 so you can get a free demo.