I was working on BDC (Business Data Catalog), to display the user profile data from SQL Server in SharePoint 2007. I was using “Application Definition Designer”  (A Microsoft tool that comes with the SharePoint Server SDK, you can see the installation and configuration here) to generate the ADF (Application Definition File). I tried to access the Business Data Types on the SharePoint page and then I have got the following wired error message. 🙂

BDC is not a really new stuff, so I tried to find the solution on the web but I didn’t get any direct solution immediately. Most of them are suggested to check the permission but I have adequate permission for BDC. Finally I have got the solution form this thread. Actually this is a bug in the Application Definition Designer and I don’t really know why it’s still there!

There might be two reasons to getting this error.

1. Not having enough permission to access the BDC

2. The “Finder” method is not generating properly in the “MethodInstanceType” property.

In my case I had adequate permisioion for the BDC, so the  “Finder” method was my problem.

You can see the “MethodInstanceType” property has “IdEnumerator” method instead of the “Finder”. So just click the drop down list and select the Finder method.

Then just export the ADF again, the Business Data Type Picker is showing the entries now huh? 🙂

References:

1. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sharepointbdc/thread/c069a168-5dd9-4f5e-90bf-872e0ce00d28 

2. http://lightningtools.com/blog/archive/2010/08/19/there-are-no-business-data-types-loaded-in-the-catalog.aspx