Excel Services is part of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Excel Services is built on ASP.NET and SharePoint Foundation technologies. Following are the core components in Excel Services:
The Excel Web Access, Excel Web Services, UDFs, ECMAScript, the REST service, and Excel Calculation Services components can be divided into two major groups: the components on a front-end server (also known as the "Web front end") and the component on a back-end application server.
An important aspect of Excel Services is that solution developers can use its power programmatically from their applications. These applications can be line-of-business (LOB) products or custom enterprise solutions that an organization develops internally.
Following are examples of these applications:
There are five types of development that you can do by using Excel Services:
For more info, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms517343.aspx
Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS) enables users to read and write data from external systems—through Web services, databases, and Microsoft .NET Framework assemblies—from within Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010 applications. Both SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 applications have product features that can use external data directly, both online and offline. Developers can gain access to a rich set of features and rapidly build solutions by using familiar tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.
To understand the important concepts and architecture of Business Connectivity Services, see the following topics:
The diagram below is a high-level architecture diagram of Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS).
Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is included in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and Microsoft Office 2010 applications. However, the feature set and the capabilities differ in each application.
The diagram below shows the differences in the feature sets of Business Connectivity Services, SharePoint Server 2010, and Office 2010. For more information about the Business Connectivity Services features in each application, see the following topics:
This diagram shows the relationship between all of the components that make up BCS or that interact with the services BCS provides.