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Setting up Business Data Connectivity on SharePoint 2010

I have a SharePoint 2010 deployment where the SharePoint server sits in a DMZ outside of a firewalled domain and individual accounts are set up on the server to then authenticate to the SharePoint site. The backend is a SQL Server 2008 server inside the firewalled domain. I am trying to set up my first External Content Type. I get to the database connection screen. I know what the server is and the database name. I don't know which to select between Connect with User's Identity, Connect with Impersonated Windows Identity, and Connect with Impersonated Custom Identity.

I have read articles and watched videos on having to go into Central Administration and set the permissions once the content type is configured, but I can't seem to get past this step.

Any help or guidance with this would be greatly apprecitated.

mounty95

ASKER

To add onto this troublesome problem. I was able to select the first radio button for Connect with User's Identity and was able to connect and then just went through the process of creating pages or such. I went into Central Administration and set the Permissions for the External Content Type to all Authenticated, All Users (windows), and All Users (forms.aspnetsqlmembershipprovider) and checked all four boxes for Edit Execute, Selectable in Clients, and Set Permissions (at this point I am just trying to test and get this to work, I can go back and modify permissions at a later point).

I go to a SharePoint site, go through the process of creating a list from External List. And it comes back login failed for user "NT Authority\Anonymous Logon"

So now I am stuck at a different place.

Please help!!!!!!

colly92002

Have you enabled the Sharepoint Claims To Windows Token service in CA? The “Claims to Windows Token Service” must be running on the farm; see Central Admin-> Services on Server

Have you got a "Business Data Conection Service" proxy configured in CA?

Have you configured Sharepoint Secure Store to configure the connection to the database?Sharepoint Secure Store

I've only done this inside a domain, using "simple" (not claims based) authentication, so you may need to configure extra stuff I know nothing about in your specific case. I would recommend you initially try to set up a simple SQL Authenticated connection to a test database (with no real data) to get this established, preferably on a dev SharePoint farm inside your domain. It's a bit of a faf to get it going even in a simple environment, but not complicated once you know how and understand what each bit is doing. If you can work your way through this in a simple environment you shoul dbe able to scale it up to the live system.

If you do not have a dev system then I would recommended you ask for one before you try anything like this, since you are potentially putting your system at risk working on the live system, and also you are potentially setting up a security hole. You can have as many dev SharePoint/SQL instances as you need if you buy an MSDN licence.

Since this is going to sit in a DMZ, I would also recommend you get outside help in sorting this from a good MS partner, just to ensure that everything is sorted. I've been running SharePoint farms since 2003 and this is not something I would be comfortable in doing myself without help :)

mounty95

ASKER

After several days of fooling around with this and setting up the Secure Store Service, setting the credentials within the secure store, building a new External Content Type selecting the application ID that I created, setting the credentials on the External Content Type, I have gotten a little further along, but the error now is Unable to display the Web Part which I researched and it isn't because of too many records, right now just trying to retrieve some 20 records. When I open it up in SPD it is returns this error:

soap:ServerException of type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.SoapServer.SoapServerException' was thrown.An error has occurred.

So not sure what to do now. I started with authentication issues, but those seemed to go away once I got the Secure Store service setup and had it configured with a SQL account that I created specifically for this.

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colly92002

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mounty95

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Colly,

Thank you for all of the leads and trying to point me in the right direction. So I pulled the log file and am seeing errors that start with SecretKey is not initialized, SyncMasterKey-No passphrase found in memory, RefreshMasterKey-Masterkey refreshed failed, The Microsoft Secure Store Service application Secure Store Service failed to retrieve the master secret key. The rror returned was 'Unable to obtain master key'.

I clicked the Generate New Key under the Secure Store Service when I established the target application. Am I missing something? Is there some other masterkey that I am supposed to be looking for?

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colly92002

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mounty95

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Thank you for all of the direction. Using the tools and resources that you pointed me to I was able to determine that there was an issue with the key generated. I deleted the Secure Store that I had created, used the default Secure Store, started over, and my problem was resolved.

colly92002

No problem.