What are the FilterZen BDC Extensions for MOSS 2007?

The FilterZen BDC Extensions for MOSS 2007 are a separate Solution Package (WSP) that extends an existing FilterZen installation by the following additional capabilities for Business Data Catalog (BDC) users on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007:

• The BDC Filter type lets you specify a Business Data lookup to determine a filter value dynamically, or to let users pick one (similar to SQL Data Filters and List Lookup Filters, but with your BDC Entity as the data source rather than a List or data table).
• The FilterZen BDC Business Data Item Builder Web Part offers an optional replacement to the out-of-the-box Business Data Item Builder Web Part built into MOSS 2007.
• The CAML Filtering mode (for using filter operators other than Equals) can be used with the MOSS 2007 Business Data List and Related List Web Parts (however, all filters are still only ever AND-combined with those Web Parts even when using the CAML Filtering mode).

Note that even without these extensions installed, all FilterZen filter types already work well with Business Data Columns as well as Business Data List or Related List Web Parts. You do not need to enable the FilterZen BDC Extensions for MOSS 2007 unless you are certain that you will need one or more of the features listed above.

How to Enable the Extensions

The roxority_FilterZen.MossBdcExtensions.wsp Solution Package is part of the roxority_FilterZen.zip setup package. Copy the former to the file system of the primary web front-end server for the server farm to which you successfully deployed FilterZen previously. You need to add the WSP to your server farm once by issuing an addsolution command to the STSADM command-line utility:

	C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server 
	extensions\12\BIN>stsadm -o addsolution -filename "c:\my-temp\roxority_FilterZen.MossBdcExtensions.wsp"

Be sure to change "c:\my-temp\..." to the actual full path of the WSP file. Once you have successfully installed the solution package, you still need to deploy it to your desired web applications from Central Administration → Operations → [Global Configuration] Solution Management → roxority_filterzen.portal.wsp.