HttpCode

I previously posted about a simple integration pattern that used the Page Viewer web part. The approach I’m going to discuss today again does not involve any custom coding, but will have a huge impact on your end users.

If your goal is to make your corporate data more available this is an easy option.

I’ve posted about this diagram before:

This is the Business Data Catalog (BDC). It can source data from either a database or a web service, once you have built an Application Definition File (the only development work needed), your data can then reach custom lists, profile information, search and custom solutions.

The benefits to this approach are:

• Reach – You’d be hard pressed to develop a feature that has more end user impact. Firstly your data can be searched, secondly your data can now be used in ways that couldn’t be foreseen. This might be a scary prospect for a lot of organisations, but this will change over time, I plan to discuss this further in another post.
• Searchability – The younger generations have grown up with the web and expect to be able to do everything via search, you’ll probably find that your search engine is the most popular MOSS feature, why not plug more data into it?
• Fits with a SOA – Yes, it’s buzzword compliant, don’t forget that the BDC in MOSS can call web services, so if your organisation has a Service Oriented Architecture, this will likely be an easy sell.

The disadvantages are:

• Doesn’t work well for complex data – It really only works well if your data is simple, for example if your trying to expose a product list or the locations of your stores.
• Read Only Data – Indexing and Searching are read only operations, as simple as that. If you want your users to rate your data or tag it, then your going to need a different strategy.