I'm trying to establish whether its possible to connect lists to external SQL tables with SharePoint 2013 Foundation.
I know that is possible in the paid versions through Business Connectivity Services. However, most places I look, BCS is shown as not included in Foundation.
The one thing that contradicts this is page here. Whilst admittedly its titled Office 365, it does include a list for On Premise solutions which suggests that BCS External List IS included in SharePoint Foundation. However, the link takes you to a page entitled “Deploy a Business Connectivity Services cloud-only solution in SharePoint 2013”.
If it is possible, then it seems that we will need to setup a Secure Store to holds ID and passwords for external sources.
Has anyone managed to link Lists to external tables in SharePoint 2013 Foundation (it needs to be 2013 as I understand Microsoft withdrew BCS for that release)? Any pointers would be very welcome to stop us going round in circles.
Thanks,
Chris.
If you have visual studio 2012 installed in the SharePoint server, you can create a "SharePoint 2013 - Empty Project", and then in the project, add a new item called "Business Data Connectivity Model".
You can search for many tutorials for "Business Data Connectivity Model", such as the example link below (note the video is about sharepoint 2010, but you can use it for sharepoint 2013):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ff623022.aspx
This solution will work for SharePoint 2013 Foundation as I have done that myself.
regards Taz