Finally, there’s some official information on MSDN about the Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in Office 365 (or more specifically, SharePoint Online).
The first article, Introduction to Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Online, provides a general overview of BCS:
- What Is Business Connectivity Services?
- External Content Types
- BDC Models
- External Lists
- External Data Columns
- Business Data Web Parts
- External Content Type Picker
- External Item Picker
- Secure Store
- SharePoint Client Object Model
- Conclusion
- Additional Resources
The second article, What’s New for BCS in SharePoint Online, provides some brief information about how developers can manipulate external data sources, or to be more specific, that this has to be done through the client object model. Some code samples are given. This information is given in the first article as well, so it’s enough to have a look at Introduction to Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Online.