Surfacing Data from Line-of-Business Applications

Abstract

It is rare to find an organization that has a seamlessly integrated data tier that is uniformly used by the organization’s business applications. More common is a set of siloed tools that duplicate data with no obvious authoritative source. Information workers in this type of environment often jump in and out of tools, copying and pasting data from one screen to the next to accomplish their tasks. With SharePoint, the organization is introducing enterprise portals and collaboration workspaces into this environment — and without careful planning, they are increasing the risk of redundant data. SharePoint lists and metadata of documents often need to include values whose source is one of these external applications. In this chapter, we will detail how as a developer you can register an external application so that is data is referenceable in SharePoint using the Business Data Catalog.