MashPoint - How Does it Work?

MashPoint uses the same exact architecture as the Microsoft BDC to consume data.  You can find a complete overview of the BDC architecture on MSDN.

At a high level, MashPoint emulates the BDC. Bamboo Shared Services Administration is installed to SharePoint Central Admin.  From there you create instances of Bamboo Shared Services.  MashPoint reads the metadata database that describes the interface to the external business data system, and provides that data to applications or Web Parts that are built to consume data from the BDC.

The metadata database is created by a BDC Application Definition file. The BDC Application Definition file contains an XML schema describing the methods and entities you want to access from the external data source. The Application Definition file is then loaded into MashPoint SSP via the Central Admin interface.  Once loaded and registered, the defined methods can be executed by an application using the standard BDC Object Model interface.

A data source can be any ADO.NET data source or Web Services or a custom written connector that accesses a proprietary data source.

The application in SharePoint, such as a custom Web Part, can access the data from the MashPoint SSP via the standard run time Object Model [Read Get Started with Using the Runtime Object Model on MSDN]  MashPoint provides the exact same Object Model interface as BDC, which can be used to access, discover and read entities from the metadata database.  Any application that currently runs on top of the BDC can be run on top of MashPoint.

With MashPoint, the external business data can be used by an application built inside SharePoint or by any .NET based application that runs outside of the SharePoint environment.

MashPoint is built to be compatible with BDC, so you can use existing web parts that consume data from BDC. There are limitations on how MashPoint works within BDC and they will be addressed in future releases, specifically:

• You cannot map data from MashPoint directly into an out-of-the-box SharePoint List.  Only Web Parts that are designed specifically with MashPoint or BDC can access the data.
• User profiles are not integrated with MashPoint
• You cannot export the Application Definition file from MashPoint's Shared Services.
• The Administrative Object Model API is not implemented.

Since MashPoint uses the same architecture as the Microsoft BDC.  You can refer to the online documentation for BDC on MSDN to understand how to build your applications.

Next:  What Can I Do with MashPoint Today?

For your convenience, we've created a screencast to provide you with a visual overview of MashPoint's capabilities: