Business Data Connectivity

Creating BDC Solution in SharePoint Using WCF Services

I recently encountered a requirement to fetch data from a third-party portal using APIs and bring it into a SharePoint server. Initially, I decided to create a BDC (Business Data Connectivity) solution to achieve this.

Here’s a step-by-step guide based on my experience.

Initial Approach Creating a BDC Solution in SharePoint

The first approach I finalized was to make a BDC solution that retrieves data from the third-party portal and deploys it to SharePoint. I found a comprehensive guide on how to create and deploy a BDC solution to SharePoint, which you can check out here.

After creating a Proof of Concept (POC), I discovered that BDC models cannot be deployed on a multi-tenant farm.

Alternative Approach Using WCF Services

After some research, I found that WCF services could be used to create BDC solutions. I created a WCF service solution that acted as a wrapper to fetch data from the portal. This service can be published to IIS or a server and then used in SharePoint Designer to create an External List.

This link provides detailed instructions on how to achieve this using SharePoint Designer.

Conclusion

  • You cannot deploy a BDC model created in Visual Studio to a multi-tenant farm.
  • WCF services can be used as a BDC solution in a SharePoint environment, regardless of whether it is multi-tenant or not.

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