Connecting SharePoint to external data
Layer2 has announced version 5 of the SharePoint Business Data List Connector (BDLC) that connects almost any external corporate data source with native SharePoint lists and closes many gaps that still exist with SharePoint data integration.
“With the Layer2 Business Data List Connector for SharePoint it is not only about surfacing data in SharePoint (as default BCS do), it’s about much deeper integration," said Frank Daske, Product Manager at Layer2.
"The BDLC connects external data sources to native SharePoint lists, e.g. contacts, tasks, events or custom lists to synchronise data changes in background. This straightforward concept makes all the powerful SharePoint list features available for external data as well - without any restrictions.”
No programming or tools are required to connect. The app can easily be configured in the default SharePoint list settings dialog with a few simple settings, such as a connection provider, connection string and a common data query.
Version 5 now supports almost any corporate data sources, e.g. databases like Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Azure, MySQL, Oracle, Informix, DB2, AS/400, Files like Excel, Access or CSV/XML, Applications like Active Directory, Exchange or SharePoint (on-premise or cloud-based), ERP/CRM systems like SAP, Navision, Dynamics ERP/CRM or Salesforce, cloud-based services like RSS News Feeds, Twitter, Facebook, Google and also generic provider like OLEDB, ODBC, OData or other custom .NET-based provider.
The desired data can be populated to the list and presented with the familiar UI and navigation features of native SharePoint lists: Views, sorting and grouping, filters, calculated fields. Lookup relationships and metadata or attachments can be created as usual for SharePoint lists.
The BDLC extends the SharePoint collaboration, search and knowledge management capabilities as well as the Office user experience to completely include external line of business data and associated processes.
In addition, it simplifies the SharePoint platform architecture, increases performance and can also save license costs: SharePoint users do access native SharePoint lists only, as some kind of “cache” of the external data.
The connected SharePoint lists can be updated manually on demand using the SharePoint ribbon or automatically scheduled in background, using a common SharePoint timer job. List item change notifications per RSS or email and even workflows can be established as usual to take business actions in SharePoint when external data items are changed. For example the Layer2 Business Data List Connector can be used to implement a sales dashboard application, which empowers end users to gain insight into the underlying ERP or CRM data in a reusable way, e.g. with aggregations and transformations and quickly being notified in case of changes.
A write-back to data source feature can be additionally enabled for bi-directional synchronization or data acquisition, if required. While out-of-the-box data integration is very limited in terms of data amount, the BDLC is designed to manage 100.000 items and more with high performance.
A free shareware version is available to download after registration