InfoPath Dev

I have created a web form in InfoPath 2010 that connects to a SharePoint 2010 list. This form/list currently has 200 fields/columns (lots of checkboxes) and there will be roughly 2500 submissions of this form annually (not all fields are filled in on the form - its random). We display no more than 200 rows at a time in our views and only certain fields out of the 200 depending on the SharePoint view being accessed.

For the short term this is an acceptable situation because the list is currently empty and just starting to be filled. I'm concerned that long term we're going to see performance issues so I'm thinking about moving this to a SQL database that is connected to the form. My question, is there a simple way of doing this? Can a web form be converted to connect to a SQL database connection easily or do I need to export the list to a file that can be imported into SQL then rebuild the form completely?

 Can anyone offer a suggestion?

Thanks,
Keith 

Hi Keith,

The main issue with the list is the number of columns. You should consider changing from checkboxes to something else.

If you are using a list form, you will need to convert your for to be a full-fledged InfoPath form. Depending on how complex your form is, that shouldn't be too hard. You can still have the regular InfoPath form map to the SharePoint list bt some configuration is required.

If you use Qdabra's DBXL Web Service (sponsor of this site), you could probably do the SQL integration in a couple hours. The major time investment will be setting up the database tables and the mapping for your form. After that it's easy. Check out the free trial for on the Qdabra site for more info. Once you have the mapping configured, you can use the migration tool to import existing XML documents.

To export list data to a full fledged InfoPath form, you can use Qdabra's XLS to XML tool. A trial of this should also be available.

Hope this helps,

Patrick