Business users in many organizations use their company's SharePoint site for collaboration. Users also like to access data from other external business applications within their collaboration environment. For example, you may be asked to allow users to access business performance data from custom a CRM system. This may sound like a complex task, but with BCS you can create a connection to external data in no time.
In this recipe, we'll learn exactly what's involved in exporting a BCS model, and then create a PowerShell script which provisions a custom BCS model into your site. Once the model is provisioned, in the Creating instances of external lists with PowerShell recipe in this chapter, we'll see how you can provision a list which consumes our external data.
At the end of this recipe, you will be all set with the script allowing you to import custom SharePoint BCS models.