Pulling in Data from another Database

[Jonsudbury]

Hello,

I have a few fields that I want to pull in from another database, is this difficult to do?

I want to use sharepoint as our internal "goto" spot. I want to pull in certain info from our time and billing database, (names, addresses, WIP, etc... )and keep all other data in sharepoint. This way there's no duplication of info, and all info necessary is passed on.

Thanks for the help,

Jon

 

[dinger2121]

You can use the Business Data Catalog (BDC) to pull info from outside datasources.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms563661.aspx

carl
MCSD, MCTS:MOSS

 

[Jonsudbury]

I should clarify. We have Microsoft Windows Sharepoint. The "free" version we originally got. Can anything be done with this version?

 

[dinger2121]

I'm not sure about WSS 3.0.
you may be able to create a custom web part that displays the data, but as far as something oob, I don't know of anything.

I have also read about some third party tools to do this, but have not tried any of them (bamboo solutions mashpoint comes to mind - google can help with that).

carl
MCSD, MCTS:MOSS

 

[dinger2121]

You may also be able to SharePoint Designer to create a Data Source in the Data Source Library. I think you can connect to web services, xml files, and Databases.

the following link may help -

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/ha101009081033.aspx

There are some blogs which deal with issues people have had connecting to certain datasources (google search), one in particular is located here -

http://www.u2u.info/Blogs/karine/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=4

Hope this helps.

carl
MCSD, MCTS:MOSS

 

[Jonsudbury]

Mashpoint looks very promising.

Has anyone used it? I think I'm going to give it a try.

http://www.lvpartners.ca

 

[dinger2121]

Good Luck - if you would post your experience for others, that would be great.

carl
MCSD, MCTS:MOSS

 

[Jonsudbury]

We may just go for it, so yes, I will provide information on the experience. This site has been helpful to me so far, hopefully I can give something back.

-Jon