Advice on a data model

I am using SP Server 2010. The requirements of a project are to:-
Search an external database so that we can bring back rows from that database with say 5 fields.
Create a list in SP to hold about 25 site columns
Use the list in (2) to add rows sourced from (1) and fill in the site columns specified in (2)
Poll the (1) to check if new rows have been added and, if they have, add them to the list in (2)
Could anyone please advise upon the best way to model these requirements in SP given this MSDN
documentation?
Using BCS presumably?
Should we favour External Columns in (2) as opposed to lookups for example (see my
post here)?
We are basically trying to convert an Excel Workbook to SP. If we have the option (and we may not) is Excel Services the best way to do this?
What is List Pattern we should adopt?
Thanks,
Maz

Hi,
For your first requirement, yes, you can use business connectivity service to bring rows from the external database field.
You can refer the detailed article below:
Using Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010
For your second and third requirement, yes you need to create external data column to fill the external database field data to the list in the list. As external list has limitation as the source of look up column directly.
More information about external data column:
Create a SharePoint List with External Data Columns
If your requirement "convert excel workbook to SP", yes, you can use excel service to display workbook content in browser directly.
More information:
Excel Services in SharePoint Server 2010
For your fourth requirement, you can create a console application with Server Object Model to check the data in the external list in first requirement, if there is data in the list ,then you can add the data to external columns in requirement 2.
Programmatically set external column
For the list pattern, it will depend on your business logic and you data count,if your data is very large, then you can use the large list pattern.
Thanks
Best Regards
TechNet Community Support
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help, and unmark the answers if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact
[email protected]

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Debbie

rp0428,
I think I am starting to see my evil ways and where I went wrong...
> Unfortunately his design is just as denormalized as yours
I see that now. My bad!!
> the last two columns have NOTHING to do with the message itself so do NOT belong in a normalized table.
> And his design:
>
> Same comment - those last two columns also have NOTHING to do with the message itself.
Right.
> The message table should just have columns directly related to the message. It is a list of unique messages: no more, no less.
Right.
> Mark gave you hints to the proper normalized design using an INTERSECT table.
> that table might list: sender, recipient, sender_delete_flag, recipient_delete_flag.
> As mark suggested you could also have one or two DATEs related to when the delete flags were set. I would just make the columns DATE fields.
>
> Once both date columns have a value you can delete the message (or delete all messages older than 30+ days).
>
> When both flags are set you can delete the message itself that references the sender and the message sent.
Okay, how does this revised design look...
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Is that what you were describing to me?
Quickly reflecting on this new design...
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Here are a few Potential Issues that I see, though...
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In retrospect, that is why I originally stuck "member_id_from" in the PRIVATE_MSG table!! The logic being, that a PM only ever has *one* Sender.
I guess I would have to add either Application Logic, or Database Logic, or both to ensure that a given PM never has more than one Sender, right?
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Because the Sender is no longer "tightly bound" to the PRIVATE_MSG, in my scenario above...
Debbie could send 100 PM's, hit her quota, then turn around and delete and purge all 100 Sent PM's and that should in no way impact the 100 PM's sitting in other Users' Inboxes, right??
I think this works like I want...
Sincerely,
Debbie

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No
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Hi,
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11.1.0.6.0
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Dear David,
Again thank you for your valuable and highly appreciated feedback. Find included a more elaborated answer to your observations:
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*2. Adding an additional attribute requires a mouse click instead of a down-arrow.*
An enhancement request has been created
*3. Adding the comment that describes the attributes is not quite as slow, but still requires more keystrokes/mouse movements than it should.*
In the new Early Adopter Release, a "SQL developer like" property window has been added for Entities and Tables. For each attribute/column you will have the ability to add name, datatype, PK, M and comment from one and the same screen
*4. I can't see the list of attributes, data types, sizes, key/mandatory settings, and the comment at one time while editing the entity. Makes it harder to grasp what all the attributes mean at a glance, which slows down the modeling and the comprehension of an existing model.*
See former answers. For meaning of attributes you can also use the Glossary and Naming Standardization facilities: see Tools Option menu, Glossary and General Options for naming standards
*5. All the entities I created had primary keys with columns in them. But when I tried to have it build a physical model, it complained that some relationships had no columns in them. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to fix that. Never had that problem in any other case tool.*
A Bug report has been created. Issue will most probably be solved in the nexr Early Adopter release
*6. Getting it to generate DDL was awkward to find. Make it something obvious, like a button on the toolbar that says "Generate DDL".*
An enhancement request has been created.
*7. Apostrophes in the Comments in RDBMS are not escaped, so the generated DDL won't run.*
A bug report has been created
*8. For the ease of use/speed of use testing on high-volume key tasks, make the developers do the task 1000 times in a row. Make them use long names that require typing, not table A with columns c1, c2 and c3. Long before they get to iteration 1000 they will have many ideas on how to make that task easier and faster to do.*
I aplogize, but I don't understand clearly what you want to say with the use/speed of use here.
*9. Make developers use names of things that are the maximum length allowed.*
Our relational model is for use for not just Oracle, but also DB2, SQL Server and in the future maybe other database systems. Whicjh means that we can't taylor it to just one of these database systems. However you can set maxinum name lenghts by clicking right on the diagram and select Model Properties and here you can set naming Options. Here you can also use the Glossary and Naming Standardization facilities: see Tools Option menu, Glossary and General Options for naming standards
*10. SQL Developer has quite a few truly gooberish UI interaction designs and I can see some of that carrying over to the Data Modeler tool.*
Fully agree. As you will see in our next Early Adopter release we have started to use SQL Developer like UI objects.
Edited by: René De Vleeschauwer on 17-nov-2008 1:58

Advice on a data model

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