Feeding back into a database via BDC

Question

Morning all,

I'm investigating the potential usage of BDC for building an advanced Out of the Box application but wanted to ask a question regarding its "two way street" potential.  Thus far I know that I can connect to a Database and pull out information from it but is it also possible to use SharePoint for placing/creating new entries?  If so, what ways are considered prudnet for adding entries, can we do so via lists or infopath forms for instance?

Any pointers or further direction for research are greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Steve

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http://www.final-exodus.net

Answer 1

Hi,

Its clear that BDC only provides read-only/ forward-only data and will not support (actually not at all responsible) to insert, update, delete data to the LOB (can say as Disadvantage). But the Advantage is Ability to search on BDC data (after crawling), no server-side coding effort and few more.

The possible solutions for read-write activity on LOB using BDC is using InfoPath forms, web page (asp.net) only.

But if you want read-write activity on LOB without using BDC then use form view web part from sharepoint designer.

• To this web part define a datasource (can SPlist, web service, database (sql server))
• Configure the datasource (insert, update, delete etc.)
  
• apply changes to the ui of web part through XSLT (only if required)
• Publish the page
• Preview the page in browser.

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manish

Answer 2

The BDC MetaMan tool supports creating web parts that write back to your LOBSystem.  Currently I believe it only supports SQL Server.  I am using them right now to insert into and update about 30 tables in the database.

More info here:

http://www.bdcmetaman.com/knowledge%20base/Making%20the%20BDC%20readwrite%20-%20Generating%20web%20parts%20to%20write%20back%20to%20your%20datasource.aspx