SharePoint Blogs / SharePoint University
SharePoint Blogs and SharePoint University - all in one place!
The Dean's Office » BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data!
Need SharePoint Training? Attend a SharePoint Bootcamp!

Please delete cookies related to sharepointblogs.com and sharepointu.com to resolve login issues!

BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data!

Nick recently blogged about a new web part available for users of his BDC Meta Man tool that allows users to use BDC data to generate a map via Virtual Earth. Cool stuff, but it's $300 if you want to buy it.

Did you know that it's really quite simple to include dynamic Virtual Earth maps to information stored in any kind of source in your site's Data Source Catalog (by the way, that includes BDC sources!) by using a Data View Web Part in SharePoint Designer? Greg Chan, one of the Program Managers on the MS SharePoint Designer team, blogged about this back in June, and included a step-by-step walkthrough. It's a great example of just how powerful SharePoint Designer is!

Check out the post here, it's definitely a keeper!

(Note: The SPD blog post doesn't show how to add a pop-up with arbitrary info in it.  The Virtual Earth SDK, however, has some great info on how to do this.  Maybe I'll blog about adding that feature, what do you think? Big Smile

Posted 10-05-2007 11:37 AM by Dustin Miller

Comments

BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data! wrote BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data!
on 10-05-2007 2:10 PM

Pingback from  BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data!

University Update-Windows Vista-BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data! wrote University Update-Windows Vista-BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data!
on 10-06-2007 3:49 AM

Pingback from  University Update-Windows Vista-BDC Mapper Web Part?  How about a free way to map your data!

Geoff Thomasson wrote re: BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data!
on 10-06-2007 8:44 AM

I guess developers time is precious now a days.  I would imagine it would take most people half a day at least to figure that out especially when it comes to changing the datasource to BDC.  Maybe you could share with us how that is done exactly.  All of a sudden $300 appears to be tempting vs $1000 of my time.

Geoff Thomasson wrote re: BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data!
on 10-06-2007 8:51 AM

Looks like most people who responded to th blog post you mentioned Dustin couldn't get it to work.  What did you do to get it to work?

Dustin Miller wrote re: BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data!
on 10-06-2007 9:31 AM

I got it to work just fine, Geoff.  And changing the datasource to BDC is simple; I used MS' BDC metadata generator to create a link to a SQL table.  Once you have any such or similar entries in your BDC, they will appear in the data source catalog in SharePoint Designer, just like any other source of data.

In fact, if all you want to do is connect to databases and retrieve data, the BDC is overkill.  The Data View Web Part does just about all you need for most database integration scenarios.  I've, frankly, never understood the fascination that most people have with it, unless they legitimately want to use that external data as a lookup field, for example.

Dustin Miller wrote re: BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data!
on 10-06-2007 9:33 AM

I have to wonder about the $1000 of your time, too, Geoff. :)  If you follow along with the steps in my TechEd presentation, you'd be connecting to RSS feeds and Web Services with data views in less than an hour.  Connecting to SQL server or BDC sources is just as simple.

Unless, of course, you're charging $1,000 an hour for your time. :)  I prefer to teach people how to use what's already in the box before resorting to any third party components.

Mirrored Blogs wrote BDC Mapper Web Part released
on 10-30-2007 6:29 PM

Body: Yesterday we released the BDC Mapper Web Part so that you can plot your line of business data on

madhurchadha wrote re: BDC Mapper Web Part? How about a free way to map your data!
on 11-20-2008 7:52 AM

The blog mentioned here basically talks of integrating Virtual earth maps with a contact list.

The display form of the list is modified to show the map.

But i beleive this method will create deployment issues ,we obviously cannot ask a client to do such configurations.

Instead what we did recently we created a custom webpart that accesed the location details like the dataview webpart and passed them to virtual earth

Now we created a custom list definition and in its dispform.aspx we added this webpart...

The biggest advantage was that any in no of instances of the list could be created and will require no configuration at all...

If there any other workaround...do suggest

Add a Comment

(required)  
(optional)
(required)  
Remember Me?
Need SharePoint Training? Attend a SharePoint Bootcamp!
Posts (c) their respective authors. Everything else (c) 2009 SharePoint Experts, Inc.