Business Connectivity Services (BCS) started out as a feature in the SharePoint 2007 product, known at that time as the Business Data Catalog (BDC). The purpose of the BDC was to enable users to read data from external systems. This provided basic connectivity between SharePoint and external databases and allowed for incorporating data from external line of business (LOB) systems and SharePoint. In the SharePoint 2007 product, BDC features were limited to the Enterprise version of the product.
BCS enables users in a similar fashion to read and write data from external systems. SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 applications have certain features that will enable them to use external data directly from online as well as offline stores. Developers can build BCS solutions in both SharePoint Designer 2010 as well as Visual Studio 2010 and gain access to rich feature sets for exposing external LOB systems to SharePoint. In the SharePoint 2010 product, aspects of BCS exist in every version of SharePoint, including SharePoint Foundation, Standard, and Enterprise SKUs. Microsoft opening up this rich feature set to the entire product line is a very helpful advance in providing connectivity to all SharePoint users.
BCS enables users in a similar fashion to read and write data from external systems. SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 applications have certain features that will enable them to use external data directly from online as well as offline stores. Developers can build BCS solutions in both SharePoint Designer 2010 as well as Visual Studio 2010 and gain access to rich feature sets for exposing external LOB systems to SharePoint. In the SharePoint 2010 product, aspects of BCS exist in every version of SharePoint, including SharePoint Foundation, Standard, and Enterprise SKUs. Microsoft opening up this rich feature set to the entire product line is a very helpful advance in providing connectivity to all SharePoint users.
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