Tuesday, September 24, 2013

SharePoint Server 2013 Search Connectors and Using BCS

The goal is to learn how search connectors can be used to connect to and search across external data sources using Business Connectivity Services (BCS). To extract content from a SQL database and make it searchable, we will create an external content type (ECT) using SharePoint Designer, deploy it to SharePoint, and create a new content source to crawl this External Content Type. Finally, we will perform some queries to confirm that the external content is now available to SharePoint search. Create an External Content Type (ECT) We will create a new external content type using SharePoint Designer. The external content type will point to a local SQL Server Database, AdventureWorks2012. The SQL database contains product and sales data for Adventure Works Cycles, a fictitious bicycle manufacturer and parts distributor. Open SharePoint site in SharePoint Designer 2013 Click on External content type


Verify that you now have an entry BCSHOL in the Data Source Explorer. 
Expand the tree view and scroll down, and then right-click on the table Product and click Create All Operations

A wizard opens that lets you customize the parameters and filters for these operations. You will use the default values
Press Finish to accept the default values
 At the right side of your screen, you should now see all the operations (Create, Read Item, Update, Delete, and Read List) on the External Content Type Operations.
In this task, you will define a title and enable a profile page for the external content type. 
Click Name from the Fields list the right side of this screen, and then in the ribbon, click Set as Title.
Leave SharePoint Designer open. You will now briefly return to SharePoint Central Administration to enable and create a profile page for the new external content type. 

Go to CA -> Under Application Management, click Manage service applications ->  Click Business Data Connectivity Service. -> In  the ribbon, if the configuration options are not visible, click the Edit tab. -> Click Configure. 


Click OK -> In the Ribbon, click BROWSE. You will return to the View External Content Types page
Return to SharePoint Designer -> Create Profile Page
When prompted to Save the External Content Type now, click Yes and close designer.


In order for the new external content type to be crawled, the content access account must have
appropriate permissions. In this task, you will confirm the correct settings for these parameters.

Under View External content type 







Create, Configure, And Crawl An External Content Source 

CA ->  Under Application Management, click Manage service applications. -> Click the link for the Search Service Application (not the proxy). -> In the left navigation, click Content Sources.






Thank You





4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUpdatedConcurrencyException: An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action. The object SearchDataAccessServiceInstance was updated by abc.com\spsadministrator, in the OWSTIMER (2288) process, on machine SPS2013. View the tracing log for more information about the conflict.
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Synchronize()
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerJob.ProvisionLocalSharedServiceInstances(Boolean isAdministrationServiceJob)

Vijayalakshmi said...

Hi Rahul
We have another enterprise social application. It as its own search engine which crawls the content. Is it possible to surface the results from this applications into SP without having to crawl the content again?

Unknown said...

Hi Vijayalakshmi,

Sorry for the delay in response. I do not think there is a straight way to do this. If your enterprise social application exposes REST APIs for search then we can display search results in SharePoint.

Thanks
Rahul

SharePoint 2013 Training in Hyderabad said...

Nice article on SharePoint Business Connectivity Services, the blog content is good and very informative.

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