From the course: SharePoint Designer 2010: Creating Data-Driven Web Pages

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Introduction to Business Connectivity Services

Introduction to Business Connectivity Services - SharePoint Tutorial

From the course: SharePoint Designer 2010: Creating Data-Driven Web Pages

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Introduction to Business Connectivity Services

Next up, I want to talk a bit about BCS, or Business Connectivity Services, in SharePoint 2010. So, what is this? Well, the quick six-word summary is it something that can make SharePoint talk to external systems. Okay, like what? Well, most commonly and easiest to understand, a separate database. But it could be a database, it could be a web service, and it could be another application. Now the question that might be running through your mind here is, haven't we just been doing this? Well, yes, kind of. This is another way to do it. If your remember that what we've been focusing on, very much the single-page model, defining a data source and inserting it onto a page, but using the much more powerful BCS allows us to really make that data part of our site, use it on multiple pages, use it in other lists and libraries, get it into Office applications, even include it in search results within SharePoint. These days whenever I have to do anything with SharePoint and external data, BCS is…

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