The Profile Page for a BDC Entity

The profile page for an item displays the information related to the item. A profile page is created for each entity when the application definition file is uploaded using the _businessdataprofiletemplate.aspx, which is available to be customized in the SSP. In the exercises for this chapter, we used the AdventureWorksDW application definition file, which has four entities: product category, product subcategory, product, and reseller. Each entity has its own profile page that was created based on the profile page template. The profile page template consists of two Web Parts: the Business Data Item Builder and the Business Data Item Web Part. A sample profile page is shown in Figure 11.19.

Figure 11.19. Uncustomized profile page.

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This profile page template by default may not be supplying enough information or the correct information. Maybe you want to see additional fields, or maybe you want to have additional Web Parts showing related items. To do this, you need to customize the template or the profile page created for an individual entity. For example, if you want all profile pages to have a certain configuration, you can edit the profile template before the application definition file is uploaded. If you want an individual entity to have a customized profile page, you only edit that profile page. The profile page template and the individual entity profile page may be edited either in the browser or with SharePoint Designer.

To edit the profile page template in the browser, navigate to the SSP, and under Business Data Catalog, select Edit profile page template. If you want to edit the profile page for an entity, when viewing an item from that entity, click on the view profile action. When the page opens in the browser, you can edit it like any other Web Part page.

To edit the page with SharePoint Designer, first grab the URL to your SSP. Remove the default.aspx, and replace it with content. Your URL should resemble http://<servername>:<portnumber>/ssp/admin/content. As you can see in Figure 11.20, the profile pages are available to be edited in the Folder list. You also can replace the default template. Be sure to rename the new file as template_business-dataprofiletemplate.aspx, and delete the old one.