How you define connections between Business Analytics and SharePoint determines what Business Analytics content is visible in SharePoint and what SharePoint content is visible in Business Analytics. This also determines how many Business Analytics Add-On for SharePoint licenses are required.

The simplest connection pattern is a single connection defined between one Business Analytics Server and an entire SharePoint farm. The connection is defined in SharePoint Central Administration to allow all site collections within the farm to share this connection.

This pattern works nicely when the domain and port number for all SharePoint site collections within a farm is the same as the domain and port number for SharePoint Central Administration.

In the following example, there is a single domain name and port for SharePoint Central Administration and all of the site collections within the SharePoint farm. A single connection to Business Analytics Server M is configured in the SharePoint Central Administration:

A corresponding connection to SharePoint Central Administration is defined in Business Analytics Server M. With this configuration, all site collections within the SharePoint farm can see and use mashups or apps hosted in Business Analytics Server M using a single Business Analytics Add-On for SharePoint license.

In Business Analytics, however, only the SharePoint Lists defined in Central Administration are visible. To make SharePoint Lists from Site Collection A and Site Collection B visible in Business Analytics, you would need to add separate connection configurations for each site collection in Business Analytics Server M. Even with multiple site collections, however, only a single Business Analytics Add-On for SharePoint license would be used because the domain and port for all these site collections is the same.

This example also defines a connection between a specific site collection and another Business Analytics Server. Business Analytics Server N has a connection defined to the SharePoint Site Collection A. A corresponding connection is defined in Site Collection A to Business Analytics Server N. This makes the mashup and apps in Business Analytics Server N visible in any SharePoint site within the Site Collection A and makes any SharePoint lists in any site in Site Collection A visible to Business Analytics users logged into Business Analytics Server N.

More complex connection configurations are needed when Central Administration and site collections within a SharePoint farm use different domains or port numbers.

The following example again has one SharePoint farm with Central Adminisration plus two site collections. Site Collection A uses the same domain as Central Adminisration, but a different port and Site Collection B uses a different domain and port number.

SharePoint Central Adminisration again has a single connection defined to Business Analytics Server M and both Site Collection A and B use this connection configuration. Because of the different domain names or port numbers, however, several connections must be configured in Business Analytics Server M:

If content in SharePoint Central Adminisration is not important, this could also simply be configured as connections at each site collection to the relevant Business Analytics Servers and connections in each Business Analytics Server to the relevant SharePoint site collections. For example: