SharePoint-Videos has just published a new set of video training for SharePoint 2013: Working with External Data in SharePoint 2013 using BCS and Workflows – On premises and Online. The target audience for this training set are SharePoint Developers and IT Pros. The course is led by Fabian Williams, a SharePoint Server MVP. The content is approached from the server side.
BCS is of importance for organizations needing to surface external data within SharePoint. Almost all of the time the method chosen will include creating external content types, or external lists. The external data surfaced in SharePoint can be consumed via search, or other services with browser clients.
Users intending to develop solutions with BCS need to have the appropriate permissions, both internally, within the SharePoint realm, and externally, as required, to work with data sources.
This video includes a substantial amount of detail about the component architecture of BCS. Business Data Connectivity (BDC) is explained with regard to how SharePoint external content types are reposed in the Metadata Store as sets of features (as opposed to actual content) and applied as required.
We recommend implementing Secure Store as the credential manager. As external content types are applied, BDC looks for a credential manager, to schedule the data communications interactions required to produce targeted results. Secure Store is the best option for a credential manager.
Some time is spent in this tutorial providing the rationale for using Secure Store for the credential manager role. The main point is providing a secure method (for internal and external data realms) of effecting the data communications required. A promising feature of Secure Store is Credential Mapping, which offers users an opportunity to empower one user with the required permissions, rather than empowering a large set of users with permissions.
The issue, of course, with the latter is the task of managing credentials becomes more complex, quickly, as the number of user with Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD) permissions increases.
©Rehmani Consulting, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder 2014 All Rights Reserved