In my previous post I started a simple tutorial of how to create your own custom connector for Business Data Connectivity Services for SharePoint 2010. I created my own project in CodePlex where to store the code of these posts. So in this article I will show you the basics of creating your own connector.

Custom connectors are the ultimate abstraction in BDC services. Basically you have the model definition as .NET objects and you can manipulate it as you wish. Internally you can call services, read files, access databases, etc. As a result you need to provide an object which conforms to method’s return type description in the model definition.

Here are the steps when creating a custom connector:

1. Create your model definition
2. Write code-behind
3. Deploy the solution

Note, that the first two steps can be interchanged. Some people prefer to start by writing the code-behind, deploy it and then start wirting their models. However I think it’s a better approach if you start with the model. Having it done in advance you can concentrate on its interpretation. So in this post I will exaplain how to create your model definition. Continue Reading…

One of the extension points of SharePoint 2010 is through Business Connectivity Services (BCS). Based on these services you can integrate external data sources into SharePoint lists. What’s more, you can work with these lists like normal, without taking care how the data is pulled out.

Continue Reading…