Microsoft® Official Course

Creating Advanced Business Data Connectivity Models

Microsoft SharePoint 2013

SharePoint Practice

Module Overview

Configuring BDC Models for Search

Developing Custom Connectivity Components•Working with External Events and Notifications

Lesson 1: Configuring BDC Models for Search

Searching External Data

BDC Search Methods

BDC Model Search Properties

BDC Model Search Security

Optimizing Crawl Performance

Demonstration: Exploring BDC Models for Search•Discussion: Custom BCS Connectors

Searching External Data

•SharePoint provides several ways to search external data• Federation• Protocol Handlers• BCS Search Connectors

•BCS Search Connectors allow non-standardized external data to be surfaced• Example: Custom proprietary, non-database based data store of files, security and metadata

•Extensibility of SharePoint Search via BCS Connector model is provided by .NET programming layer

BDC Search Methods

•Search Connectors using BDC Models require specific stereotyped methods• IDEnumerator• StreamAccessor• BinarySecurityDescriptorAccessor• SpecificFinder

•Performance enhancing methods should be considered• ChangedIdEnumerator • DeletedIdEnumerator

BDC Model Search Properties

• In addition to stereotyped methods, several special properties exist to support search functionality• Used to tell search which crawled properties map to search specific values• Examples: DisplayUriField, MimeType, LastModifiedTimeStampField

•Without these search properties, you cannot select the model as a search content source:• ShowInSearchUI• RootFinder

BDC Model Search Security

•Search security involves two levels• Authenticate to the external source• Get security details of items from the source

•External Source Authentication is same as any BDC model• Exception is the search app pool account may be used as the authenticated caller

•Retrieving security details from a target source may require a mapping scheme• Example: JohnDoe, Grant =>Contoso\JohnD, NTLM Allow• Use the BinarySecurityDescriptorAccessor method

Optimizing Crawl Performance

• Indexing large external sources with several millions of items presents challenges• Incremental crawls should be implemented• ChangedIdEnumerator• DeletedIdEnumerator

•Utilize the multipart architecture of BDC Search model• Retrieve file contents via the StreamAccessor• Retrieve security via the BinarySecurityDescriptorAccessor

•UseClientCachingForSearch property can be used to cache items

Demonstration: Exploring BDC Models for Search

In this demonstration, your instructor will walkthrough a simple BDC Model for searching external content.

Discussion: Custom BCS Connectors

•What types of application data might you build a BCS connector to index?

Lesson 2: Developing Custom Connectivity Components

BCS External Connectors

Creating and Deploying .NET Connectivity Assembly

Creating and Deploying Custom Connectors

Storing External System Credentials

Search Connector Best Practices•Troubleshooting and debugging BCS Connectors

BCS External Connectors

• There are four types of BDC Model types• Database• WCF• .NET Connectivity• Custom

• Database and WCF are easily created using SharePoint Designer• Deeper level logic such as item level security and

incremental crawl support is not supported

• .NET Connectivity and Custom require .NET developed assemblies via Visual Studio• Both are .NET based artifacts, difference is in the way

they are implemented• Custom Connector is much more flexible in its ability to

integrate with the search architecture

Creating and Deploying .NET Connectivity Assembly

•Visual Studio has several wizards and tools to help support .NET Connector development• Mainly relates to the model file, but some support for .NET connector is provided

•Deployment is two step process• Deploy Model to BCS• Call the Import-SPBusinessDataCatalogDotNetAssembly cmdlet to deploy the assembly

•Once assembly is deployed, SharePoint designer can be used to create new models

Creating and Deploying Custom Connectors

•Visual Studio support for Custom Connectors is limited• Support for BDC model file• Support for Interface implementation signatures• No auto-generation support of methods or method signatures

•Custom connector models require implementation of specific interfaces• ISystemUtility, IConnectionManager, ITypeReflector, IAdminsitrableSystem,ISystemPropetyValidator

•Model must have special properties added to point to interface implementation classes

Storing External System Credentials

•Consider how you will store the credentials used to connect to the external system•Common approach is to utilize Secure Store Service application• Store Application Id in the BDC Model file• Implement the IContextProperty interface• Implement code to retrieve the Application Id• Use the Application Id to retrieve the credentials• Use credentials to login to remote system

Search Connector Best Practices

•No matter what type of connector, ensure you follow best practices • Handle null values• Match parameter names• Handle exceptions• Avoid large memory usage• Implement incremental crawl methods• Use filters to limit data retrieval

Troubleshooting and debugging BCS Connectors

•Utilize Search Crawl Logs and ULS logs to debug and troubleshoot your BCS Search Connectors •ULS crawl related logs will be under mssdmn.exe process• Errors and stack trace will be more detailed than crawl log entries• Utilize the ULSViewer.exe tool to easily filter and monitor for errors• Attach the Visual Studio Debugger the mssdmn.exe to debug your .NET connector

•Try to avoid common errors to decrease development time

Lesson 3: Working with External Events and Notifications

Event and Notification Features

Enabling External System Events

BCS Events Feature

Implementing BDC Event Methods

Initiating Subscriptions

External List Event Receivers•Demonstration: Working with External Events

Event and Notification Features

•SharePoint 2010 External lists did not support alerts or event receivers

•New SharePoint 2013 stereotyped operations allow external lists to participate in notification features of SharePoint• Alerts• Event Receivers• Remote Event Receivers

Enabling External System Events

• External system must provide subscription support• OData would provide a Subscribe and Unsubscribe HTTP method• Database model would provide a Subscribe and Unsubscribe stored procedures• External system must be record subscription data

• Example: DeliveryAddress, EntityName, Columns, User

• When data changes, it is responsibility of external system to notify SharePoint of changes• Same event may trigger multiple subscription notifications• Response message format must be an Atom feed response

BCS Events Feature

•BCS Event Support requires a hidden list to be created to keep track of subscriptions• “External Subscriptions Store” list stored in _private\ExtSubs folder

•Enabled by activating the ExternalSubscriptions web feature

SoporteITC

Implementing BDC Event Methods

•BDC Model has been extended to have two new stereotypes methods• EventSubscriber, EventUnsubscriber

•Special properties drive the method behavior• IsDeliveryAddress, IsEventType, IsOnBehalfOfField, SubscriptionIdName

•OData method type requires specific properties to drive information exchange• ODataEntityUrl, ODataHttpMethod, ODataPayloadKind

•Three Message Response Parsers• Identity, ODataEntryContent, Custom• Identity is default if none specified

Initiating Subscriptions

•Subscriptions can be created explicitly or implicitly• Explicit calls are made via the entity’s subscribe method• Implicit calls are made when alerts or event receivers are created

•Conversely, a subscription can be removed explicitly or implicitly• Explicit is made via entity’s unsubscribe method• Implicit is called when an alert or event receiver is removed

External List Event Receivers

•Once subscription methods are configured you can place event receivers on your external lists• ItemAdded, ItemUpdated and ItemDeleted are only supported events

•A new property of the SPItemEventProperties class is ExternalNotificationMessage• Contains the encoded message that was sent from the external system

•Convert the message to a string and analyze the external event changes

Demonstration: Working with External Events

• In this demonstration your instructor will demonstrate how to deploy an OData BCS model that support event subscriptions

Lab: Creating and Deploying a .NET Connectivity Assembly

Exercise 1: Create a .NET Connectivity Assembly

Exercise 2: Implementing Entity Methods•Exercise 3: Deploying and testing a .NET Connectivity Model

Lab Scenario

Contoso has a subsidiary company called Northwind that would like to use the Contoso SharePoint Farm to index their product data. They have asked you as the Contoso Sr SharePoint Developer to help them architect and build a solution. The basic requirements are the Northwind users would like to be able to search on product data from multiple data sources using SharePoint Search and be able to update that data using SharePoint interfaces. The product data is spread across two separate databases. They have asked you to present all the data in the two databases as a single item in the search results

Lab Scenario

•and in an external list. You have been tasked with using BCS Search Connector framework to accomplish this business requirement.

Lab Review

What is the most important thing to double check when building your entity model methods and your entity class methods?•What is the reason for having multiple methods that retrieve information about a single items such as metadata, security and the file contents?

Module Review and Takeaways