InfoPath Dev

Hi... InfoPath is making me sick :-( 

When I create a new Form I point it to the webservice (for submitting). It then asks which function/operation to use. I click next and I give it a name... That's all. InfoPath then creates the data fields in a sort of locked mode. I cant edit change or delete them. Now when I decide I want to use a different Webservice, how would I change these fields and tell it to use a different Webservice. If I modify the "Main Submit" connection, it then asks me which fields I want to use... But this still doesn't effect the first datafields (that are locked).

Can someone please give me guidence

Hi,

I just went through this a couple of weeks ago... the Infopath stress :-)

Maybe a good start to start using different web services, is to use the manage data connections tool, found in the data source task pane, also in tools-data connections menu. There you can add connections to other web services or other operations on the same web service.
 

Hi JamesLaker,

This is a common problem when you create an InfoPath form *from* an existing Web Service or Database. In a nutshell, you can't change the data source. Our advice is to create your XML schema independently and connect to Web Services to submit or query. If you do that. The Web Service data source will be secondary. Because of the limitations around the Database and Web Service derived schemas, we created the Database Accelerator Web Service Suite (DBXL). You take your existing form (with it's own XML based schema) and just submit or query from your database. This way, you can change your main data source schema whenever you want. And, the Web Service or Database schema can also change any time. No problem. The main data source is decoupled from the secondary data sources. That provides more flexible development. You reduce your costs.

We now leverage DBXL for 90% of our InfoPath consulting projects because it makes it tremendously cheaper to develop solutions and maintain them longterm. Customers tend to like that. Given the cheap cost (free for dev version), you really can't go wrong.

If you don't have a database, just create your form from scratch and add the Web Service data connections so that they appear as secondary data sources. Then, you can remove and add new ones without a problem.

Hope this helps!

Use the back door. Save the forn as Source Files. Amongst these files there is a manifest.xsf. In this file you can find and modify the web service URL. Also amongst the files there are some xsd files. The larger one is the main data source correspondent. In this file you can modify the fields of the main data source.

Finally, open the manifest in Design mode and use Save As to convert it back to xsn. that should be all.

Details here.