Case of an external list being inaccessible

Question

I have an external list that I created with a bdc, but it might happen that the external source is not available is there any way that the sharepoint saves a last access? if not what is the best alternative since I need the information on that list < key, value > for a Dropdown-list.

Thanks

Answer 1

Having an unreliable data source is not a good basis for leveraging ECT. I would suggest caching the data to a more persistent location like a SQL Table or a SharePoint List (if the dataset is not large).

If you have SQL Server, you could develop an SSIS package for this quite quickly and run it as a scheduled job.

HTH.