Business Data Catalog Write Back for ODBC Data Sources

By admin Uncategorised 8th July 2012

This walk through only applies to BDC Meta Man 4.0.0.7 and later.

There are two articles which we are going to reference to.
The first one describes how to Configure BDC with ODBC connection strings.
The second one describes how to Get the Business Data Catalog to write back.

In this article we are going to describe how to create write back web parts for databases which use ODBC connection string connection types in BDC Meta Man.

DB2 example

1. Open BDC Meta and select “ODBC – Connection String” from “Connect to data source:” menu.

2. Enter connection string to “SAMPLE” DB2 database, delimiter symbols and parameter symbol.
Press Connect

3. Expand the database you have connected to so you can see all the tables available for you to use

4. Drag and Drop one table from tree to Design Surface and select “Edit Entity” from popup menu.

5. Open “Write Back” tab page on “Entity Management” dialog and click “Generate Web Parts for this Entity” checkbox.
Select “DEPTNO”, “DEPTNAME” and “ARMDEPT” fields, open “Update” tab page and select all fields.

6. Now Open “Actions” tab page, press “Create Custom Action” button and enter “Name”, “Action Parameters:” and “Url”.

After that click Save entity.
7. Open menu Configuration->Settings and fill the fields “Application Definition Filename”, “Generated Web Part Folder” and “Namespace” in “Configuration Options” dialog

Press Save.

8. Click “Generate” button. If everythink is ok then we will see this message

9. Then build and setup generated web part and import adf file. The steps to do this are described in Get the Business Data Catalog to write back article.