Business Data Catalog Overview

The Business Data Catalog feature of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides an easy way to integrate business data from back-end server applications, such as SAP or Siebel, with your corporate portal to provide rich solutions for end users without writing any code. You register business data exposed in databases or through Web services in the Business Data Catalog by creating metadata that describes the database or Web service. The Business Data Catalog then uses this metadata to make the right calls into the data source to retrieve the relevant data.

After you register a data source in the Business Data Catalog, the business data entities are available for use by any of the following business data features:

• Business Data Web Parts Generic Web Parts that display any entity from the Business Data Catalog, without deploying new code. The Web Parts provide customization, Web Part connections, and the standard Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services look-and-feel capabilities (paging, filtering, and style).

• Business Data in Lists New field type that allows you to add any entity defined in the Business Data Catalog to a SharePoint list or document library.

• Business Data Actions Business Data Actions bridge the gap between Office SharePoint Server 2007 and a native application user interface by providing a link back to the back-end data source. You can use Business Data Actions to build applications with write-back scenarios, such as a Customer Profile view that allows a user to update profile information directly in a back-end server application, such as SAP or Siebel. Actions are implemented as links, so you can also use actions to perform simple actions such as send an e-mail message or open a customer’s home page.

• Business Data Search Offers full-text search of the data sources registered in the Business Data Catalog. You can create new search result types based on the specific data entities registered in the Business Data Catalog.

• Business Data in User Profiles You can augment Office SharePoint Server 2007 user profiles from any external data source registered in the Business Data Catalog.