InfoPath Dev

I have inherited a form where the submit is handled in code, with various parameters being sent as either "text and child elements only" and some as "XML subtree".  The web method then calls a stored proc that saves the various bits to a database.

 It seems to me that it would be better to pass the entire form to the web method in one chunk.  But, does this then get passed as one large string which I then have to deal with (possibly in a proc using SQL XML), or should the web method be created based on the Infopath schema so that it receives a rehydrated object from Infopath (not sure how to do that)?

 Also, what is the difference between submitting data as string or not (checkbox in the data connection wizard)?

TIA

Graeme

Hi Graeme,

Your intuition is correct. It's better to do loose coupling and submit a string. See my recent post in response to Donna for a brief discussion of best practices. Main reason is that you can have one Web service that can be used for multiple InfoPath forms and submission process doesn't break when the form or the DB changes. To map your XML to SQL, you will need a mapping layer. Install DBXL and check out our XML to SQL mapping view in our admin tool (DAT) to see how we do this for arbitrarily deep relational tables in SQL.