create parent/child relationship in sharepoint BCS using WCF programmatically

Question

I have two Parent/Child tables in SQL Server and I would like to expose them to sharepoint by using BCS and display the results in a web part as parent/child relationship using a treeview.

BCS exposes 4 methods, Real List, create, read item, update and delete, which are used when an external list is created. These operations are used by the list.

I have created a method (WCF) which returns a collection of items based on ID

List<Customer>GetItemsById(int parentId)
{
// code here
return items
}

So, how can I expose this method via BCS since there are only 4 methods that can be used?

Or do I have to create external lists firt in sharepoint and use the Server Side Object Model code to perform a Parent/child relationship?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

By creating association between related entities you can get parent/child relationship. BCS supports this scenario.

Although the article doesn't have your specific scenario, it explains step by step how to achieve parent/child relationship using Visual Studio BCS solution:

parent/child relationship