Business Connectivity Services (BCS) solutions are custom solutions that integrate with SharePoint Server (as well as SharePoint Online). Developing a BCS solution requires both deep business application knowledge (such as what types of entities need to be managed) and development experience with Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer or the Microsoft Office Developer Tools.
BCS can be used in a number of scenarios, such as the following:
- Retrieving and presenting external data from enterprise applications or web services
- Enabling offline use of external data
- Connecting structured data from enterprise applications with unstructured data such as documents and images
- Building applications to update and interact with data in enterprise or external applications
While building external applications that leverage BCS is outside the scope of...
