Mart Muller's Weblog

Last week we received an email telling us that we are the winner of the Search Partner of the Year Award! We are very proud receiving this Microsoft award for a project we did with Twijnstra en Gudde, a Dutch company.

Basically what we did for the user, is creating one single search text box:

Underneath however, it searches many different subsystems like CRM data, Projects, a document management system, people in the organization and all the relations they have with each other.

Using Ontolica search for MOSS 2007 and the Business Data Catalog (BDC), we achieved a user friendly user interface with all kind of drill down options that go through all the different systems.

Anyway, great achievement for Tam Tam and the people that worked on this project!

It seems like they have released a professional and developer version of the BDC metadata manager for MOSS 2007! Great work!

"BDC Meta Man makes generating Application Definitions easy due to the many features it offers.

• Easy to use Windows application
• Ability to connect to and browse multiple data sources
• No need to know how to write XML or SQL
• Integrated Shared Service Provider Administration Web Site
• Inspect your application definition and edit any part of it
• Saves enormous amounts of time and effort"

For a full overview of features per version, check out this document.

Get this tool! Wow, Todd Baginski did a great job creating a BDC tool that makes life a lot more easier!

From his blog:

“What would you say if I told you that you could create a MOSS BDC Application Definition without writing a single line of code?  How about if the process took less than 20 clicks of your mouse?

You'd probably say, I've seen that crazy Application Definition XML file and I think you are pulling my leg.  You might recall seeing the contents of the nasty XML file during a demo at a recent SharePoint conference and think to yourself, there's no way, this is too good to be true.

Well, as you can probably guess by now, this is possible with the help of an application I created called the MOSS BDC MetaData Manager.  The application allows you to point and click your way to BDC euphoria (if there is such a thing), and requires no knowledge of C#, VB.NET or XML.  If you can use a computer then you can use this tool.  Seeing that you are using a computer and found your way to this web page, you already qualify!”

download the tool here

I’ve been playing around with a new MOSS 2007 feature called the Business Data Catalog on which I will give a presentation on friday (blog post will come). One of the biggest challanges was to create a working definition XML file.. using the xsd and of course the Office Server SDK finally made me integrate Tam Tam data into SharePoint, using it in lists and the search center (whohoo!). Screenshots will follow!

In my opinion it is one of the best improvements in the new version and I see lots of opportunities for our customers and ourselves.

Lawrence pointed on his blog to some interesting resources for BDC development to help writing the definition files:

Database Metadata Generator for the Business Data Catalog
The database metadata generator creates one system and one entity that corresponds to a table or view. Specifically, it generates:

• An LobSystem
• An LobSystemInstance
• An Entity
• A Finder method of the form "SELECT * FROM Table"
• A SpecificFinder method of the form "SELECT * FROM Table WHERE IdentifierColumn = @IdentifierColumn"

Business Data Catalog samples
This GotDotNet project is dedicated to using the BDC within MOSS and will provide Application Definitions samples for many common LOB systems.

Today I attended a session about the SharePoint Business Data Catalog (BDC). I think this is one of the biggest steps forward in the new SharePoint version. The BDC basically is a layer between data sources (ado.net or xml) and the SharePoint core elements like webparts, lists, search and custom applications.

The benefits are that you can REALLY integrate your business data into your SharePoint environment, without writing any code… well, you have to write a (xml) data definition file with the source entities and relations. A tool for generating it will not be shipped by Microsoft, so there is an opportunity for 3rd party developers here.

So, once defined the xml, it is just a matter of importing it into the BDC in the SharePoint UI and the data will become available on several places:

• Some business data webparts (for showing data in master detail and related views)
• SharePoint Search, which is one of the coolest things: you can easily add a new tab to the sharepoint search center for searching for the new content types.
• SharePoint List, is in custom colums
• Programatically, to integrate the data into webparts and applications, preserving security and business logic.

One of the problems with the BDC is data synchronisation. This must be done manually when data is altered. So, there could be ‘old’ data available in SharePoint. You’ll have to write a mechanism to update the catalog automatically. There is a sync button in the SharePoint fields to update it, but it seems like it is not the perfect way to deal with it.

So, I personally am very happy to be able to integrate external data sources like CRM or other databases that easily. Can’t wait to try it out myself (probably tonight)!