Modeling Database Systems

Article
10/16/2013

The Business Data Catalog provides built-in support for displaying data from databases and Web services. That is, you can use the Business Data Catalog to display data from your SAP, Siebel, or other line-of-business (LOB) application via Web services or databases.

Using the Business Data Catalog to interact with database systems is straightforward:

Model the system by using database tables; whose structure is typically easy to interpret ..
Determine the primary keys that will be identifiers for the entities.
Based on entity relationships, determine the associations.

Business Data Catalog: Overview and Architecture

If you are new to the Business Data Catalog, start by reading these topics:

Business Data Catalog: Overview
Learn about this new business integration feature, which enables Office SharePoint Server 2007 to surface business data from back-end server applications without requiring any coding.

Business Data Catalog: Architecture
The Business Data Catalog is composed of a metadata repository and an object model that provides a unified and simple way to invoke operations and a consistent, object-oriented programming interface for business logic that is stored in the various business applications.

Business Data Catalog: Roles and Development Life Cycle
Four roles—business analyst, metadata author, administrator, and developer—are necessary to create and deploy business data solutions in an Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment.

Business Data Catalog: Development Scenarios
Review development scenarios for authoring metadata and building custom applications with the Business Data Catalog.

Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor

The Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor helps you to write application definition files for the Business Data Catalog. This tool automatically generates the XML for the definition file, so you do not need to manually create the file in an XML editor. It is included in the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK.

To learn how to use this tool to author metadata for database systems, see Creating a Database Connection by Using the Business Data Catalog Definition Editor.