InfoPath Dev

Hello, Is it possible to use Infopath (I have version 2007) to create web based forms that will then update data in SQL Server 2008 tables. I am trying to find an efficient way to manage updating by multiple users. Currently we pass a spreadsheet from 1 user to the next. This process is very time-consuming, and formulas are inadvertanly broken. If what I want to do is possible, can anyone reccomend a tool, book, or website to provide some instruction, guideline, help, etc. Thank you, Tammy

Hi Tammy,

To configure a browser-compatible form template to submit data to a database, we need to use a data connection that submits data to a Web service that works with the database. Qdabra has DBXL which is a great tool you could use to map your InfoPath form data to an SQL server. Here is a video playlist and some modules you could look into and work on.

Hope that helps.

Hi Tammy,

You can use BCS to map simple tables to SQL but it's a lot of work to configure and doesn't handle complex data structures without code. Plus, if you change something, it tends to break.

We developed our generic data-driven Web service to help people like you quickly map data to SQL. It's very cheap and we offer discounts for non-profits and free versions for people interested in giving us testimonials or case studies. The main requirement is that you install it on a server. If you can't do that, I recommend mapping your form to one or more lists and using those lists to do reporting, or connect those lists to SQL using BCS. It's more work, but it's out-of-box.

Good luck!