What is an External Content Type?

External content types are reusable metadata descriptions of connectivity information and data definitions plus the behaviors you want to apply to a certain category of external data. External content types enable you to manage and reuse the metadata and behaviors of a business entity such as Customer or Order from a central location and enable users to interact with that external data and processes in a more meaningful way.

The benefits are as follows:
  • Enable Reusability
    The external content types are reusable data definitions that can be reused using the various methods provided by SharePoint to display the data
  • Encapsulates Complexities of the external system
    The user need not know the complexities of connecting to the external data source and where it is actually located.
  • Ensure secure access
    Provides the user with a secure access to the external data source through SharePoint.
  • Simplified Maintenance
    The maintenance of the external content type can be done from a centralized location the central admin
  • Enables external data search
    The SharePoint Search Service allows the data to be searched from the external data source
  • Provide built-in Office and SharePoint behavior
    Users can interact with the external data source from within their known environment without have to understand or learn the external system
  • Enable working offline
    You can take external content types offline in Outlook 2010 and SharePoint Workspace 2010. Business Connectivity Services provides rich cache and offline work features, and supports cache-based operations. Users can manipulate external data seamlessly and efficiently, even when they are offline or if the server connectivity is slow, intermittent, or unavailable. The read/write operations performed against cached business entities are synchronized when connection to the server becomes available.
The presentation features that are available are as follows:
  • External Lists
    The external lists are similar to the normal SharePoint lists with the only difference being that the data is not stored stored in the content database rather it is stored in the external data source and fetched when the external list is accessed.
  • External Data Columns
    In the normal SharePoint list the user has the ability to add a column as External Data Columns and map it to the external content type created and display data within the list.
  • Business Data Web Parts
    Business Connectivity Services offers the following Web Parts: External Data List, External Data Item, External Data Item Builder, External Data Related List, and External Data Connectivity Filter.

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