Performance issues with Business Connectivity Services

Today, one of my colleagues reported some issues with Business Connectivity Services (BCS )  in Office 365.

Microsoft support’s response has been:

So I added a post to the Microsoft Tech Community site and I found soon that I’m not the only person with this issue.

So where does this leave us when we want to connect to non-SharePoint databases within Office 365?

The option is (I have not found many alternatives):

• Create an OData web service (you would likely already develop this when using BCS solution anyway)
• Create an app or use the new SharePoint Framework to connect to the web service.

I have now create a user voice for you to vote on: https://sharepoint.uservoice.com/forums/330318-sharepoint-administration/suggestions/18550603-bcs-on-office-365-doesn-t-perform-very-well-and-n

While I did some more testing, I also found that the width of the tables used by BCS is very important. It seems that when you use tables that exceed 10 columns that the performance very rapidly reduces. So if you have to use BCS then you might want to consider limiting the size of the tables used.

Pieter Veenstra

Is your business still running on paper trails, sprawling Excel files, or ageing Access databases? There's a better way — and I can show you exactly what it looks like. I'm the Technical Director of Vantage 365, a Microsoft solutions consultancy working with clients across the UK, the Netherlands, and worldwide. For over 30 years I've been turning messy, manual business processes into clean, automated systems that save time, reduce errors, and give teams the visibility they need to make better decisions. SharePains is not just any blog run by a Microsoft MVP. Have you ever used Try-Catch in Power Automate? The original post about Try-Catch in Power Automate can still be found on this site, https://sharepains.com/2018/02/07/try-catch-finally-in-power-automate-flow/ Or have you ever used the Pieter’s method to avoid variables and speed up your flows? https://sharepains.com/2020/03/11/pieters-method-for-advanced-in-flows/ You can contact me using contact@sharepains.com