Create Entity with Stored Procedure

Question

Hi,

I am new to BDC. I heard that BDC can expose more info to Sharepoint's userprofile. (http://<servername>/_vti_bin/userprofileservice.asmx?wsdl), is that correct?

BTW, I will be using this along with InfoPath which will populate my form with a specific employee.

So, I am trying to create a definition list, with only a stored procedure which return the vacation days of a user (with employee id as the parameter). So this definition list is created with only one method -- Specific Finder. I haven't created any Finder or IDEnumerator at all. When I imported it to Sharepoint, I got an error and the status is "Crawlable = no"

I saw in the demo when stored procedure was used, 3 methods need to be created Finder, Specific Finder and IDEnumerator. But I only have Specific Finder, since I only want the vacation day of an employee.

How can I setup the definition list in BDC, so that I can expose the vacation days of a specific employee in the infopath.

Please advice. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Let's separate a couple of things.

First, it sounds like you are close with the application definition file. The "Crawlable=no" is expected because you did not define an IDEnumerator. This is fine, don't worry about it. The import error needs to be investigated. Sounds like you have an actual error in the ADF. Note the line number called out in the import and look at the ADF carefully.

The second issue is InfoPath. If your goal is to get a list of vacation days, you really don't need (or want) to use BDC. Simply use a db connection stored in a SP connection library. Use this connection to retrieve the data in InfoPath.

Scot

Answer 2

Yes you are correct using BDC you can have additional user profile properties that are mapped to fields in BDC entity
I recommend using either BDC editor that comes with sharepoint SDK or thirdparty tool bdcmetaman to create your application definition file
I use both in combination because MS editor has the ability to test the methods before you add to SSP
For Profile import to work you need to implement specificfinder and IdEnumerator methods

In your scenario I believe what you are trying to do is have an additional user profile property called "Vacation Days" that would be mapped to a field in your BDC entity. Like I was saying earlier use BDC editor that comes with SharePoint SDK to create the application definition, test the methods using the tool prior to adding to SSP
Once application definition file is added to SSP, you need to create a user profile import connection (be sure to choose Business Data Catalog from Type dropdown), If you have modelled your application definition file correctly you should be able to pick entity using the picker and complete rest of the configuration
Next step is defining a new user profile property, lets say "Vacation Days"
"Source Data Connection" dropdown under "Property Import Mapping" section  you should see your BDC connection defined in earlier step
select that, you will need to select the field in the entity that would map to the property (in your case it would be Vacation Days)
complete the configuration and you should be able to do full import

Couple of things to know
BDC import will only work if there is a master import connection which should be either AD or LDAP
Set the diagnostics logging to Verbose for BDC and UserProfile categories, if you are having issues you can look at the ULS_LOGS to troubleshoot

Once above configuration is complete you should be able to use infopath to pull user profile information into the infopath form using the user profile web service

Good luck

</Ram>

Answer 3

This looks like a very useful post, but please don't let's have Microsoft people proposing their own posts as answers.

(=Wait for someone else to do so).

(Moderator)

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Answer 4

Oops sorry about that Mike, I read in announcements somewhere that you are supposed to propose as answer, newbie to forums :)