Just curious what the experience has been in uploading MS Access tables to SharePoint 2007 list. We've been planning on doing so, but I seem to recall issues with SharePoint mangling Access tables in the resulting lists and generally the migrations not going so well. Your experiences? Best practices and recommendations? I'm particularly concerned on its ability to migrate forms and reports as well if it can do so. Thanks!
In response to a question from UK SharePoint User Group I wrote a blog post on Using Access 2007 with SharePoint lists which you might find interesting (some interesting comments too).
There is no facility to migrate forms or reports in Access 2007/SharePoint 2007, only tables. Lots of new stuff in Access 2010/SharePoint 2010 which will allow you to create Access Web databases for SharePoint.
Derek
As mentioned, the big news for Access 2010 is we can build web sites and publish applications to the web. Here is a video of me running ms-access in a browser (the 1st part is in the client, but you clearly see me switch to the browser version of the application about ½ into the video):
www.members.shaw.ca/MrTurtle/2010d1/w1.html
For access 2010 the tables (or so called lists) are going to have things like cascade deletes, cascade delete restrict. There also again a whole bunch of performance improvements that will allow much larger list sizes to perform well.
Note that the new table triggers (data macros) will also go up to SharePoint when you publish the database.
For access 2007, there is not really any particular special problems, but there is just more limitations compared to the next version of access that is coming out. So for example if you need to link up a whole bunch of related tables you have in 2007, when you push the tables up to sharepoint, you don’t have any cascade deletes or any RI options like you’ll have in access 2010.
So I don’t recommend pushing up an application with a whole bunch of interrelated tables. It just not going to work. However, if you have a simple customer list or contact list of a few thousand names that you need to share, then access 2007 should work just fine for you.
So, keep in mind if you have a list or table you need to share, then fine. However, you not going to have any luck or success if you have a whole bunch of tables that are interrelated, and you need to run the application in that fashion.
Related
I am trying to create a data entry "app" to collect daily readings across our site. Here are the three biggest constraints:
Software - ideally, we would use some software within the Microsoft 365 Suite, mainly because those are the only approved apps on site. It may be possible to use open source software, but that might raise some flags in terms of security. So my thoughts are to use either Excel or Access.
Cost - ideally, we do not want purchase any additional software licenses. I would try and create something with Power Apps, but we do not have the licensing for an Azure or SQL server to store the data. I could be missing something here though.
Mobile-Friendly - finally, it needs to work on an Android tablet. Currently, we collect readings using pen and paper. The whole idea of this is to move towards using a tablet.
The easiest approach would be to create an Excel spreadsheet, save it on OneDrive, and edit the spreadsheet. I don't love this option because we are collecting 100's of data points each day. This would end up with a very wide spreadsheet that will be cumbersome to navigate.
The other option I looked into was creating an Access database and accompanying form and storing it on SharePoint. However, it seems Microsoft has stopped supporting Access databases on SharePoint.
I have created data entry forms using VBA, similar to this, but these do not work on mobile.
Is it possible to create a data entry form in Excel that also works on the Android version of Excel? Are there other alternatives I am not thinking of?
I am engaged in just this kind of project also. I have written an app in PowerApps, built an Excel spreadsheet and stored it in OneDrive, and am running it (the app) on an iPad. The design differs somewhat from your description of directly presenting a spreadsheet to the user (which I think PowerApps could do) because I don't want users having direct access to the data.
Edit: You do not need Azure or SQL, unless you are storing tons of data. Excel can be a satisfactory data storage location for modest uses.
I found the learning curve for PowerApps to be quite steep, as it's a different paradigm than line-by-line coding.
I think this is a more user friendly way to collect data than trying to run an Excel form, and once you get it made and polished, you'll look like a pro :)
I am by no means an expert but if you need some tips I'll do what I can to help. It sounds like we are at similar developmental stages.
Is it possible to create a data entry form in Excel that also works on the Android version of Excel? Are there other alternatives I am not thinking of?
Microsoft Forms does the job when created from OneDrive on mobile browser. Side note: the form I just created and the response I submitted have now disappeared from my OneDrive.
I also saw some people using Power Automate to save responses from a form into an Excel file (every reponse).
Is Sharepoint my best option to replace an aging network of fileshares? There's approx 1TB of data residing among 3 fileshares (1 DFS, 2 NAS boxes). A document management system is in place for new things - the file shares are now just read-only archives/legacy. Our users would simply need to be able to search for and open the documents.
Users are finding it difficult to locate their documents in the file shares and windows search does not often help. Sharepoint was suggested as something which would play nicely with Office documents (99% of the content) and have a good search facility.
Not being a Sharepoint Developer or having had any training on it, I'm getting a little lost. I have set up a test server to try it out using SP2013. I have managed to index each of my file shares and have created a search page. However, results aren't consistent with the indexted items. I assume I need to somehow get the relevant metadata from the files but I have no idea how to go about this.
Could anyone suggest some resources for help on this subject (my searches have mainly turned up paid-for Sharepoint addons or outdated blogs) and any experience of doing something similar? Also happy for any suggestions on ways to achieve this using other software/platforms.
I went with Microsoft Search Server 2010 in the end.
Sharepoint is basically optimized to be a document manager. I think you don't need to buy or donwload addons.
For your problem, metadata are the key! You need to properly specify the metadata.
I give you the theory of a plan document management in SharePoint 2013 :
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263266.aspx
A nice introduction to metadata :
http://fr.slideshare.net/gzelfond/document-management-in-sharepoint-without-folders-introduction-to-metadata
Be careful to use the Microsoft documentation for the beginning. From my experience, its difficult to start with this documentation because you have several things in it. There is also good books/ebooks that you can find easily to start well, and probably more simplified than MS documentation.
I'm looking at the architecture for a DW project and there will be the need for some manual collection of [structured] data eg the monthly accounting results from a country manager where they need to complete a form and fill in half a dozen values etc.
I really like the idea of using SP and InfoPath for this as it gives the security, the workflow and the customisability etc that mean it can be easily deployed as the client already has SP rolled out. The bit I am less clear on is how, technically, we might interface to the SP workflows and the forms themselves. Ideally the data would end up dropped into a database and we would use our [their!] standard ETL (DataStage, possibly sat on a linux server) via ODBC and pick it up like any other datasource but I am not sure what this requires on the SP side. The alternative would be to get at the XML of the individual forms and pull the info from there.
Are these appaoches feasible? What would need to be set up on the SP side in order to make this integration as robust and seamless as possible? Can anyone point me at docs/reading matter that might give me some more background info?
Thanks,
Dex
First up, accessing sharepoint's databases is never the answer to any integration question. You should treat it as a black box.
So, how should you get the data? Web Services + HTTP. SharePoint offers a large amount of Web services to get at the data you need. If you're working with IP forms, then ultimately you will need to grab the resultant XML file from the document library and parse it to get the data you need. The Web services can be used to enumerate the IP forms, and you can use straight HTTP to grab to xml file. This is probably the approach that would be offered by most experienced sharpepoint people.
I need to create reports on SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 (SSRS) on data coming from SharePoint Lists,
i was searching for ways to do that and i found,
connecting to SharePoint web service
out put XML, the problem here is it
sometimes work and sometimes don't,
and also i couldn't do inner join
between different lists may be it is
there but it will be trouble to do
it i think (if there is easy way
tell me please)
Creating a link table in MS Access
2007 that links to sharepoint lists,
and then connect to the MS ACCESS
link tables from SSRS 2005 : this
will work but i am kind of scared of
having ACCESS in the middle i always
want to avoid using access
connecting to the views provided in
the sharepoints backend database
(there is a view for all lists and
another view for all list items) :
here column names will be troublsome
to create the query the clounm names
are like
(float1,float2,...,date1,date2,date3,....)
, also i am not sure if it is good
thing to make SSRS talk directly to
sharepoints backend database views
can you tell me which of these ways is best (or if there is a better way plz tell me)
i kind of like the third way but not sure if i should use it
I have summarized this problem on our wiki, but it is not complete.
http://wiki.threewill.com/display/enterprise/Reporting+on+List+Data+in+SharePoint.
Note that we have since tried out the CorasWorks DIT and it looks like a promising approach.
We are exporting all the data to a SQL database everynight ( we have also started to move items away from Sharepoint because of performance). Then we use standard Reporting Services to create the reports....
(+) reporting doesn't hit the performance of day to day activities in Sharepoint
(-) the data is "one day" old
Check out SharePoint List Assocation Manager, SLAM.
Allows you to do exactly what you're looking to do in real time and it's free and very well supported.
http://slam.codeplex.com
Edited:
What is the easiest way to scrape extract SharePoint list data to a separate SQL Server table? One condition: you're in a work environment where you don't control the SQL Server behind the SharePoint Server, so you can't just pull from the UserData table.
Is there there any utilities that you can use to schedule a nightly extract?
Is Microsoft planning any improvement here for "SharePoint 4"?
Update Jan 06, 2009:
http://connectionstrings.com/sharepoint
For servers where office is not installed you will need:
this download
There is a SSIS SharePoint task you can use to grab the data info a regular dataflow:
http://www.codeplex.com/SQLSrvIntegrationSrv
Scraping? As in screen scraping? Are you serious? ;)
2 Options
SharePoint Object Model - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms441339.aspx
SharePoint Web Services - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms479390.aspx
specifically the Lists web service
The web services is how Excel/Access communicate with SharePoint to integrate with its lists.
In fact a bit of Google foo gives these two results :-
Connecting SQL Reporting Services to a SharePoint List
Accessing SharePoint List Items with SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
The 2 minute answer is to use Data Synchronisation Studio from Simego ( http://www.simego.com ) just point it at your List and database and it will sync all the changes.
There is an ADO.NET adapter for MOSS 2007/2010 and WSS 3.0/4.0 available which goes under the name Camelot .NET Connector for Microsoft SharePoint. It enables you to query lists in SharePoint through standard SQL language, using SharePoint as a data layer.
Besides from the connector, there will be a large number of open source tools and utilities available, such as webparts for exporting data to various formats (XML, MySQL, ..), Joomla plugins, synchronization services, etc.
See http://www.bendsoft.com for more details and to watch webcasts. BendSoft is currently looking for beta-testers and encourage all feedback from the community.
Example:
SELECT * FROM My Custom SharePoint List
INSERT INTO Calendar (EventDate,EndDate,Title,Location) VALUES ('2010-11-04 08:00:00','2010-11-04 10:00:00','Morning meeting with Leia','Starbucks')
DELETE FROM Corp Images WHERE Image Name = 'marketing.jpg'
I had written a full article about this with step by step screenshot procedures. It does not use any third party components only SQL BI Tools and Sharepoint. Have a look here
http://macaalay.com/2013/11/01/how-to-archive-sharepoint-list-items-to-sql-server/
As Ryan said I would also suggest using object model / web services to store data to separate SQL database. I think that the best approach is to write an event handler that will trigger on your least and copy the data user inserted/updated.
Regarding your query about "SharePoint 4", Bill Gates made some remarks at SharePoint Conference 2008. He suggests enriching SQL tables with SharePoint data, and goes on to mention several other potentially cool things. What exactly he means and whether it will help solve your problem in the future is hard to say until we start seeing betas of WSS4 / MOSS 14.
I would go with the simego software, but i dont have the money, maybe a 15 days trial is enough!
If you have MOSS installed, the Business Data Catalog can be setup from the Sharepoint Central Administration to automagically synchronize data for you. This is a very powerful product and is included with MOSS. I love it when a client has it enabled so I can take advantage of it.
But some don't and for myself, I've found that if they don't have BDC running and available, inevitably they don't give developers many rights to SQL Server so SSIS is generally out of the question (but maybe that's just me). No problem; for those I'll pull together a lightweight EXE that runs on a scheduled task that queries Lists.asmx and pushes changes to a SQL Server table. Fairly trivial stuff for a simple list where nothing is deleted. Get yourself Visual Studio 2008, CAML Builder, and prepare for a good time. The Lists.asmx results is a little funny in that a list's row's fields are each a single node with a lot of attributes, with no child nodes ... something like this off the top of my head ... just remember that when coding ...
<z:row ows_Id="1" ows_Field1="A1" ows_Field2="B1"/>
<z:row ows_Id="1" ows_Field1="A2" ows_Field2="B2"/>
Complications in code occur with copying lists where items are deleted, or where there is a parent/child relationship between SP lists. You'd think I'd have some code to send you, but I haven't bothered putting together something I could reuse.
I'm sure there's other ways of handling it, but the scheduled task EXE so far has been reliable for me for multiple apps for multiple years.
i wrote some code to achieve it, you can find it over here
extract data from moss 2007
Depending on the exact nature of the data you need to insert, it may be possible to just use the auto generated RSS feed to get the information you want, a process will need to read the rss and formulate a query.
Otherwise a consoleapp/service could use the object model to do the same thing, but with more control over field information.
I wish something like this was much easier to do. Something that didn't need SSIS and was boiled down to a console tool that reads a xml config file for source/target/map info.
http://blogs.officezealot.com/mtblog/archive/2008/06/03/importing-list-data-into-sql.aspx