Today we've quietly released a new version of BDC Meta Man, version 2.0.0.9. Quiet due to the fact we aren't sending out a email newsletter about it yet as we have a number of other BDC web parts to release over the next days before we let everyone know about them all together. We've added a number of interesting features in this release but the one I want to quickly tell you about now is web service associations. Previously you could create entities based off web methods but there was no way in BDC Meta Man to be able to associate them together. This meant cracking open the XML file and doing this by hand - well my friends, no longer!!!
As with other web service methods you create for the BDC, you are going to need to create a web method fit for purpose that can implement your association. For example if you've got two entities Product and Order and you want to get back the orders for a particular product, you are going to have to implement a web method such as:
[WebMethod]
public List<Orders> GetOrdersByProductId(int productId)
To use this in BDC Meta Man you need to create your two entities on the design surface:
Then we can drag and drop an association line between our two entities, upon doing this a dialog box pops up asking us which web method we want to use to implement the association:
Our web method is GetOrdersByProductId so we pick that one. Finally we are asked to match the input parameters of our web method against the identifiers of our parent entity. In this case it is easy as the identifier of Product (ProductId) simply maps to the single input parameter of our web method. Once we are happy we can generate our app def file, import it into our SSP and pick the BDC List and Related List web parts to display our data!
Another new feature of BDC Meta Man is the easy ability to delete associations once they are created. Simply select the line on the design surface, then hit the 'delete' button.
I'll get a new screen cast up on the site very soon, and post a note here when it's done.
Just a quick note, Web Service functionality is only available in the Professional version of BDC Meta Man.