Multivalued bdc column - a dream?

I think (based on experiment and crawling through the internet) that this is impossible, but I will ask again - does anyone know of a way to make a BDC column multivalued

I have a web service that allows people to seach for values from an external system, but they need to select more than one value.

Please let me know if you know the solution.

Thanks, Ishai Sagi

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Multivalued bdc column - a dream?

Glyn Harper

I don't think this is supported by the default user interface.. But i think the API would allow you to create your OWN web part that leverages the BDC and allows multiple parameters to be passed.

Does the Default "Multi Column Filter" int he list web part not suffice I think you can preload that with parameters to keep your users from having to select them and click add for each one... Try it out before you embark on writing a custom web part solution...
Novice in C&#35;

Steve,

First - let me thank you for reading and answering. All of my questions on BDC have been unanswered so far and I was feeling lonely.

As to what you suggest, I dont understand what you are referring to "Multi Column Filter". Is this refering to a lookup\choice column types if so, this does not help me since my information is coming from an external system (active directory organization structure in my case) and can only be obtained using code.

If the BDC will not provide me with an easy solution, I will have to write my own field type + custom control to get the data. but I want to get a second opinion.
me&#42;
I'm also looking for a web part like this or possibly a way to get BDC data into a sharepoint list (not column). This way we could possibly use the default multi-value lookup provided by MSFT. Anyone have an idea how to populate a sharepoint list using BDC
Steve Thornton

Hi Steve,

thanks for the mention :) we're doing our best here.

At the end of the day us MVP's have access to exactly the same information in the SDK you have, even though we chased and chased info to help with BDC Meta Man.

I've forwarded the link of this thread to Lawrence to let him know your frustrations.

Many thanks

Nick
chilakaluri
Of course Nick :-) All of us that try to help others on here are helping to build this community :-) It's the greatest thing about hte Internet in my opinion !!!
AndyJ_PS
Thanks, Ishai. I'll have to take a look at this. I still think a multi-value BDC lookup is very useful and I'm sure most people will start to ask for it as it is used more. Ultimately, I'd prefer not to have to sync lists with external datasources. Have you found a viable solution via API and custom controls yet
osamaT
I think we can use XSL Editor for that webpart to display multivalue for a column.
Srilatha

Well, I do a lot of Enterprise Application Development with a service oriented midset. Knowing that, you could create a web service interface to retrieve the information and return it in a format that the BDC can consume (this is not near as intuitive as pulling from a SQL database but it is possible.

This allwos you to use your AD Data in your apps without directly hitting AD, distributing the credentials around your network, etc..

Then you could query the data and create filters using the built in BDC web parts.

I think I see what you are after but don't really have an easy solution.. I think you are on the right track with your custom control, etc..

I'd like to see Microsoft commit some fo the resources that developed this platform to support for the community int he forums.. I see some MVP's out here, etc.. but at least int eh initial phases, it would be nice to see some guidance from MS folks on how to proceed with some of these things :-)

I submitted a post that is a BUG from what I can tell twice and bumped it a ocuple of times but to no avail... no one on the MS team has responded at all or even pointed me in the right direction for submitting bugs, etc...

I know it is fructrating, but if we all keep posting these quetions, eventually we'll get a community built :-)
coco250

I wrote this for 2003, and the company I used to work for now upgraded it to 2007. it's called "sharepoint list synchronizer" and it allows you to specify jobs of copying data from external sources into sharepoint lists (as well as copy between lists).

I am pretty proud about that piece of software, even though I dont work for them anymore.

http://www.omnisys.co.il/main.asp lngCategoryID=2557

They have a free trial version.
Multivalued bdc column - a dream?

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