The Business Context
In many large organizations business data is stored inside of flat files from mainframes or other legacy systems. These systems chug along just fine everyday and support many key elements of the business; they aren’t going away anytime soon. Traditionally, accessing flat file data, making it viewable in a web pages, and making it searchable requires an enormous amount of custom code.
The Solution
New functionality inside SharePoint 2010’s Business Connectivity Services (BCS) makes it extremely easy to connect to flat file data sources (or any other data source), display it in web pages, and make it searchable. This...