Following are the new features in BCS in SharePoint 2013 :
1.) OData Support
SharePoint 2013 introduces support for OData Business Data Connectivity (BDC) connections. This is in addition to data connections for WCF, SQL Server, and .NET assemblies. The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a web protocol that is used to query and update data. OData applies web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub), and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores.
Business Connectivity Services supports Anonymous, Basic, Windows, and Custom authentication to OData services when it is used with the Secure Store Service. If you want to apply permissions at more discrete levels, use OData connections. OData connections provide an easier way to create BDC models that work for both SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 client applications. In SharePoint 2013, you can connect external lists that are surfaced through OData to Office 2013 clients and you can work with the data when you are offline. When the Office 2013 client reconnects, it performs bidirectional synchronization with the OData source.
2.) Support for apps for SharePoint
Business Connectivity Services supports apps for SharePoint in two ways. First, BDC models can be scoped to apps for SharePoint. Second, connection information is defined and stored separately from the app-scoped BDC model in BDC connections.
3.) Performance improvements in external lists
SharePoint 2013 introduces a number of improvements for external lists. These improvements reduce the load on the database servers in the SharePoint farm and increase the speed of list rendering. Performance is enhanced by having the external system do paging, filtering, and sorting of the external list data before it is sent to SharePoint.
4. ) Limiting records returned by the external system
5. ) Data source filtering
6. ) Sorting external lists
7. ) Export external lists to Excel
In SharePoint 2013, you can export an external list to Excel 2010 or to Excel 2013. This works much like exporting SharePoint native lists to Excel in SharePoint Server 2010. However, there are some differences in how you control what gets exported and how you work with the exported data. By default, exporting external lists is enabled. However, an administrator can disable this.
When you export an external list to Excel, you basically get the list as it is displayed in the browser. You get only the data that is present in the selected view and the rows and columns in Excel will have the same sorting and filtering applied as the external list. The column names in the exported data will have the same language settings as the external list and the exported data is subject to any filters that are on the external system.
The process of exporting data creates a one-way (external list to Excel) link between the external list and the Excel version of the list. The Excel version can be refreshed at any time to reflect the current state of the source external list. This means that any changes users might have made to the Excel version are overwritten. Changes that are made in the Excel version are never pushed back up to the source external list.
8.) Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Online enhancements
One can bring external data into SharePoint Online from cloud-based data sources and from data sources that are behind your company’s firewall in a hybrid scenario. Microsoft Business Connectivity Services can consume data sources that are exposed as WCF services, SQL Azure data services, OData endpoints, and web services.
9.) REST (CSOM) object model for Microsoft Business Connectivity Services for web and mobile app developers
In SharePoint 2013, Business Connectivity Services exposes the Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs for web and mobile app developers to use. These APIs provide a standard interface to the developers.
10.) Event listener for BCS
SharePoint 2013 provides an event listener. The event listener includes an event subscriber on the SharePoint 2013 side. The subscriber receives notifications from the event publisher (on the external system side) on changes to the data and then initiates predefined actions when changes occur. This enables SharePoint users and custom code to receive notifications of events that occur in the external system. The users and custom code need to explicitly subscribe to events on entities for which they want to receive a notification. The external system can use any of the supported connections (OData, SQL, or WCF) for transactions with the external system. However, to support eventing, the external system must implement interfaces that allow users to subscribe to events and it must send the notifications back as ATOM feeds or JSON objects to the SharePoint 2013 endpoint.
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