InfoPath Dev

Hello - First time posting here.. I'm very new with Sharepoint and Infopath..

Here is the scenerio - We have a List created in Sharepoint that houses all our Server information for our datacenter (for example - machine name/ip address/model/description/windows version/etc etc)..

What i'm trying to do is create a form in Infopath to simplify the update process whenever a new server is built.. Since I can't connect directly to the sharepoint list from infopath what tried to do was create a linked table in Access then I created and ODBC connection with that database then i connected to that ODBC with Infopath and the lists came through - the problem i'm having though - Infopath comes back and says it can't let me submit anything because the list doesnt contain a primary key.. Access wont allow me to edit anything in the list and i see nowhere in sharepoint to make a collum in the list a primary key.. If anybody has a better way of doing this please fill me in!

Thank you!

Anybody? Please? :)

Hi Asavage and welcome to our forum,
You can connect to the SharePoint list to read information. To submit information you can write code using some protocol (like WebDav) to access the list. We built a tool that edited the list table a while ago and it worked, so defining a receive/submit SQL adapter is also possible, but a lot more work.

Patrick Halstead [InfoPath MVP]
InfoPathDev

Hi Patrick - Thanks for the welcome! It's appreciated!

I've been sucessfull with reading information from a sharepoint list within infopath - Although I'm kind of a bonehead when it comes to programming code... Do you have any resources I can take a look at that will give me some more information on the WebDav idea you gave me? I'd like to connect to the SQL Database directly as you said - if you can offer up any other resources for that too it would be greatly appreciated.. I've searched the net up and down and I can't find much regarding this.. I found somewhere that someone was able to update a Sharepoint list using C# - But since i don't know C# it makes it a little more difficult :) hehe..

Thanks!

-Adam

Hi Adam,

Chapter 9 in our book is all about SharePoint and it has some code for using WebDav and SharePoint. There's probably also some snippets if you search around MSDN in the InfoPath labs area.

To submit to SharePoint's SQL directly, you will either have to a) write code, or b) use a third party tool (like our Database Accelerator Web service) to interface with the database. We haven't actually tested this scenario out, but we write code that submits to SQL all the time.

We can write some C# code for you. Contact me separately, if you'd like us to do some consulting.

Regards,

Patrick Halstead [InfoPath MVP]
InfoPathDev

Hi Adam,

i would strongly advice you to *not* work directly on the SharePoint database!

Lots of reasons not to:
There is no guarantee that the data model wont change tomorrow (thats why MS supplied an API)
Updating could also corrupt your database (for example if you update some but not all referenced foreign keys)
Not covered by Support if issues emerge

Also there is no need:
Theres plenty of other ways to do this, including WebDAV, FP-RPC (frontpage remote procedure calls) and SPS Web Services / Custom Web services.

Please explain in more details what you are trying to do. If you want to view and edit data from a custom list in SharePoint, use the UpdateListItems method of the SPS Lists web service (try openinghttp://<your portal>/<your area>/_vti_bin/lists.asmx in your browser to get a list of methods)

I recently posted some data about this to another user in this forum, so search for UpdateListItems and you should find some sample code on how to achieve this through managed code.

I advice you to download the SPPT SDK for reference.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AA3E7FE5-DAEE-4D10-980F-789B827967B0&displaylang=en

hth
AndersR