InfoPath Dev

I've been looking around awhile and it's late and all I have found is that MOSS has a Data Connection Library that you can store your data connections in. Is there any way around to making a Form in a form Library in wss to query a sql service to populate form data or do I have to have MOSS to do it? Seems almost worthless to use InfoPath in WSS without any kind of Data Connection support, I guess just for more pretty dynamic forms that pass data into the list?

Any help would be appriciated as this is my last hurdle in my planing of a solution for one of my departments and if this doesn't work with WSS I got to find another way, cause our MOSS deployment is out a little ways...

Thanks for your help.

I think you may be confused.

IndoPath supports many data connections with a Sharepoint / WSS item.

In MOSS they have a library for storing global connections so that they can be shared between forms, but that is all it does for you. From InfoPath's perspective there is very little difference between WSS and MOSS with the exception of browser based forms.

hmmm, every time I try to publish a form to SharePoint it doesn't work because it's looking for my data connection. Is there some way I need to save my data connection so that I can click on New Item in a Forms Library and fill out a form which is pulling data from a data connection? Guess I am stuck on that part, I want others that have InfoPath to be able to browse to this Library click New Item and get the published form with the data connection to an external database in the logic. Is this possible? Thanks!

Hello Clay.  I hate to dig up an older post - if WSS and MOSS are similar as far as data connections go, how do you create data connections is WSS?  I have created the .odc file containing my connection string information and it works great from my machine, but when I publish the form, I do not know how (or where) to put the .odc file on the WSS server.  I tried to create a document library and store it there, but i am unable to point my form to it there.  Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Do you mean a UDC? a Universal Data Connection?

I am not sure WSS supports UDCs but you should not need one. UDC are ways of storing data connections centrally and managing them centrally rather than in each individual form. They are only required for Browser based forms, which ar eonly available with MOSS.

What are you connecting to with the data connection?

Maybe I am misunderstanding what I am reading.  I have a form that connects to a SQL database that is behind a firewall and requires a VPN connection to get to and the form is published to our extranet as it has to be accessed by folks outside of the network.  Without the VPN connection, the form is unable to access the DB and I think it is because the connection is client side and not server side.  What I am trying to accomplish is to set the connection up so that the connection to the DB is between SharePoint and the DB rather than the client and the DB.  Am I trying to fit a square peg in a round hole?

This would only be applicable with Browser based forms.  otherwise the client is always making the connections to the data. Even with a UDC the connection is still from the form, on the client to the data source.  In your case, either the cleints would need to establish the VPN first or you would need to move your data base so that it is accessible directly.

Using web services might make this easier. Then you could put the webservices on the Sharepoint site, i am assuming Sharepoint is accessible without the VPN.  You might want to investigate Qdabra's web services suite. it would allow you to install the web services you need.  Web Services give you the greatest functionality and performance.

Are you referring to the Active Directory Web Service product discussed on Qdabra's website http://www.qdabra.com/proddetail.asp?prod=QADWS ?  Does it do more than the active directory functions that are discussed in the product description?  I am afraid that I do not know much about web services.  The documentation states that the web service cannot get data across domains.  I believe that will be the case in my situation.  I have a consultant onsite that has suggested that he could possibly write a web service, but he is unsure of his probablility of success as he has never done something of that nature for IP.  Is the web service somethig that I can just drop it in, wire it up and go?  Sorry to come across as a bit ignorant, but this is all a bit over my head.  I work for a home builder and as you can probably guess, we do not have tremendously full coffers with regards to IT spending and the result is that we are trying to do as much in house as possible.  That means that I am having to kind of learn on the fly so to speak.

I understand.

You want their Database Accelerator package.  That includes the AD tool but also the SQL web services.

It is built for your situation and empowers you to create enterprise solutions very rapidly.

DBXL v2.2 Final Release

You can also contact them for demo.  That way you can get a quick answer on how it might work for you and see how they can be leveraged.