Installing Application Definitions in MashPoint: AdventureWorks Sample

In this section we will configure MashPoint to work with the AdventureWorks sample database from Microsoft. If you don't have it, you can download it here.  If you are using SLQ Server 2005, download it here, and follow the instructions here.

You also need the Application Definition for AdventureWorks which is included in the download package of MashPoint in the MetadataFiles folder.

After you have installed the AdventureWorks database, it's time to modify the application definition file (ADF) to connect to your database. We will start with the PassThrough authentication mode (you can read more about this on MSDN).

Open up AdventureWorks2000 PassThrough Metadata.xml in your favorite XML editor.

Find the following line:

<Property Name="RdbConnection Data Source" Type="System.String">[EnterYourAdventureWorks2000ServerNameHere]</Property>

And replace [EnterYourAdventureWorks2000ServerNameHere] with the name of your SQL Server instance. In our example we will use (local).

<Property Name="RdbConnection Data Source" Type="System.String">(local)</Property>

Save the file. Now it's time to upload it into MashPoint.

Open up your Bamboo Shared Service and select "Import application definition."

Browse to the ADF file that you just modified and select "Import."

After the application has been imported you will see this page:

Here you see an overview of the application you just imported.  You can see that the Access Account is "logged-on user" (that is PassThrough mode). This means that the identity of the currenly logged on user will be used to access the LOB system.

You also see a listing of the entities defined in the application. In this sample we have three entities, Customer, Product and Sales Order. If you click on one of these entities, you will see additional information about the entity. Let's look at the Cutomer Entity.

 Detail view of the Customer Entity.

In this view, you see all the fields that are defined for the Customer: FirstName, ID, and LastName.  You also see relationships between the Customer and other entities; in this example, Customer is related to SalesOrders via the CustomerToSalesOrder association.

Now let's display the data using the Bamboo Data-Viewer Web Part. If you haven't already installed it, you need to do so.  Start by downloading our free trial version of the Web Part.

Once you have downloaded the Bamboo Data-Viewer Web Part, it's time to install it.  Extract the .zip archive and start setup.bat.

Click "Install."

The setup program will verify that you have enough permission to install and deploy SharePoint solutions and that all required services are running. If any of the checks fails, make sure you are logged on as a user with enough permissions (a local administrator should have enough permissions).

The next screen shows you where the solution will be deployed.  Uncheck "Central Administration," and click "Next."

The install will wait a maximum of 15 minutes for the deployment job to complete.

After this you should see the following screen:

We are now ready to add the Data-Viewer to a page and display data from AdventureWorks.

Since our Bamboo Shared Service is associated with two Web Applications, we can add the Web Part into either of them.

I will add it on the Administration site host itself.  So I click on the "BambooSharedServices1 (Default)" link.

Create a new Web Part page.

Since I didn't automatically activate the feature during install, we need to activate the Web Part before we can add it to the page.

Navigate to your Site Collection Features and activate the Web Part feature.

Now you will be able to add the Web Part to the new page.

Now it's time to configure the Web Part.

Select Business Data Catalog as the data source. Then click the "Browse" button to pick your entity.

Select the "Customer" Entity and click "OK."

Select the fields you want to display from Available Columns. The Data-Viewer Web Part can display relationships so you want to click "Show Nested Data."  Pick the relationship you want to display (for the Customer, you only have one relationship: CustomerToSalesOrder).  Finally, select the fields you want to show for the related entity.

 Let's enable some of the additional features in the Data-Viewer Web Part.

You have many more settings in the Data-Viewer that I won't describe here.  A list of available features is available in the Application notes which are included in the Data-Viewer Web Part .zip file which you downloaded earlier.

We have completed the configuration of the Web Part, so click "OK," and Exit Edit Mode.

You should see thje Data-Viewer Web Part displaying data from AdventureWorks.

(Troubleshooting assistance coming soon.)

Now that you've got your AdventureWorks sample installed, let's continue by installing the Amazon Web Service sample.

/Jonas