Creating an external list from SQL query using BCS

Question

I'm developing a visualization application on SharePoint Enterprise 2010. This involves doing some SQL queries I would love to expose as external lists in SharePoint. All interfacing with the database which contains the data we want to analyze happens through Business Connectivity Services.

SharePoint designer easily lets you expose a single database table as an external content type/external list. The question is, is there an easy way to create an SQL query involving multiple tables where the result of the query becomes the contents of an external list? I'm pretty sure the third-party BCS Meta Man will let you do this, but is there an easy way to do it directly?

Answer 1

SharePoint Designer will also expose any views or stored procedures you have. You can set those up for use in the external contenttype. If you go into the data source explorer in sharepoint designer you will see views and routines in the tree under your database. If you can add a view or a stored procedure in SQL, then it will show up there and you can take it from there to implement readlist, readitem and so on.