Virtual Entity Overview in Dynamics CRM

With each release Microsoft Dynamics CRM releases new way that avoids writing custom code and provide a configuration to achieve that task without custom coding. In release Dynamics 365 version 9 CRM has introduced Virtual Entity to simplify integration with external system.
As you can guess from name Virtual the entity doesn't store in database. It stores data from external system that you can use with your entities. A model is build at the runtime when requested.
Virtual entity replace previous techniques to integrate  the external system  with CRM, which required custom code and suffered from various limitation , including coding measures, duplicate date. Each virtual entity is associated with virtual entity data provider , data provider is nothing but inbuilt CRM plugins with works on CRUD operation, In this release only read operation is permissible. 

Currently Virtual entity supports two data provider:

• An OData V4 , its installed by default.
• An Azure COSMOS DB 

If data provider can not be found for your virtual entity you can create your own custom data provider. 

How to create Virtual Entity Data Provider: 

You can create Virtual Entity data source inside Administrator - Virtual Entity Data Source.

Create Virtual Entity: 
Virtual entity can be created same as any other custom entity gets created. At the time of creation of entity you can choose Virtual entity option by checking the Virtual entity checkbox.

As soon as you will select this option two additional field will appear where you need to enter previous created data source name,