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the Free CMSWire NewsletterWith the move to consolidate on a single enterprise platform, the question most often asked is how other informational assets can be leveraged. SharePoint 2010 provides many tools and approaches to solve this issue.
With many organizations seriously considering SharePoint 2010 as an enterprise platform to support multiple business process the question of integration is often raised. Put simply, adopting SharePoint 2010 as a robust platform can lead to many efficiencies, one frequently touted is the consolidation of existing informational assets.
However the step from having multiple disparate systems to having multiple workloads on the SharePoint 2010 platform is often too wide a chasm for enterprises to adopt. Frequently many organizations are adopting the approach of incrementally rolling out SharePoint 2010 functionality whilst integrating with their existing systems. This integration can be in the form of storing data within the SharePoint environment itself, or more commonly, utilizing SharePoint as a consolidated user interface to external data assets.
Integrating External Data and SharePoint
This latter approach has many benefits, not in the least the reduction of complexity of data migration but also aligning focus into achieving tangible business value quickly from the platform. Existing informational assets remain outside of SharePoint but are exposed on the platform providing a consolidated view, interface and functionality to end users.
Fortunately SharePoint 2010 comes with a wealth of integration capabilities available for enterprises to take advantage of. Built in platform capabilities such as Business Connectivity Services or the new REST Data Access services allow two way integration. Many larger enterprise software vendors have started offering integration capabilities with SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft recently announced the CMIS connector for SharePoint 2010.
Lets have a look at some of the features that can be leveraged:
1. Business Connectivity Services
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is a new feature of the SharePoint 2010 platform, building on the Business Data Catalog (BDC) functionality of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
BCS provides a set of services and features that provide new ways of connecting and integrating external Line of Business (LOB) data into SharePoint 2010. BCS is extremely powerful and flexible allowing enterprises to create connections to external data sources through the use of SharePoint Designer or more complex scenarios with custom code development.
For organizations that wish to manage external data within SharePoint, BCS provides a robust and scalable platform to do so.
BCS data can be surfaced within the SharePoint interface in a way that is completely transparent to end users, promoting usability and compliance. BCS can also be used to connect external data to Office 2010 applications in the same way. With full CRUD capabilities, multiple connectors shipping with the platform (Database, WebServices, WCF, .NET and custom connectors) and full lifecycle control by administrators, BCS offers a wealth of integration possibilities.
2. Web Services
As with previous versions of SharePoint a number of Web Services have been included that can be leveraged by both SharePoint and external systems for integration purposes. Common web services include the ability authenticate, search, manage content and much more.
SharePoint 2010 also includes built in RESTful web services which are intended for use by remote components that need basic capabilities for list and library data. REST Services can be simply accessed using HTTP requests, utilizing standard HTTP verbs such as GET, PUT, DELETE and POST to perform CRUD operations against the service.
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