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I have been asked to connect or update a sharepoint list with data from an oracle database. I have found a few limited examples that really did not get me too far. My understanding is that there are a few approaches I might take but I wondered if anyone here has already done something like this. I do have access to Visual Studio and can write custom code if I need to.

Update: I have more of an idea of what I need and some direction would be greatly appreciated. I need to have a sharepoint list that gets new data and appends data from an oracle database. The list also needs to be able to have data that users can update that does not come from oracle. I would also like to enable minor versioning on this list to track changes that come from both oracle data and user data. We only have WSS 3 but as I stated above, I can write custom code if I need to.

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  • What version of SharePoint are you using? 2007 or 2010? Also do you want to append data from Oracle to existing SharePoint list items or documents or the SharePoint list is to be just Oracle data? Commented Mar 20, 2010 at 11:43
  • It would be nice to just have a link to oracle, but I do not think that it is possible with WSS 3 is it? Commented Mar 20, 2010 at 20:02

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Nick's version question refers to having access to the BDC (2007) or the BCS (2010) with the Enterprise version. These make it very easy to expose external data within a SharePoint site or list.

If you do not have the Enterprise license then you need to dig in and do some customizations. I worked in one environment without an Enterprise license and I had do something similar. I initially wrote a console application in VS that could access the database and add new data to the SharePoint site. This code was pretty simple. I then took the same code and adapted it as a timer job.

Both of these options allow for running the process in a scheduled or ad-hoc manner. If it only needs to be done ad-hoc you could bundle it in a web part.

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  • This sounds doable but preferably as a webpart. We only have WSS 3 so I expected some form of customization. Do you have an example or link to a blog post? Commented Mar 20, 2010 at 14:34
  • The code that adds the list items to the Sharepoint list is the same no matter which route you take. The problem with the web part path is that somebody has to actually initiate the process where the other two can be scheduled. Here is a link to the documentation for adding an item to the list: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms470423.aspx Commented Mar 20, 2010 at 15:21
  • Thanks for the link. I can write code to add items to a list just not connect to oracle to get what I need! Commented Mar 20, 2010 at 20:00
  • You are able to connect to an Oracle database using ADO.NET and an Oracle provider, or by consuming a web service that exposes the underlying data. Commented Mar 21, 2010 at 0:30
  • Do you have any specific examples of doing this in Sharepoint or links to code examples? I am finding some things but none of them seems to go from start to finish as I have never done this before. Commented Apr 26, 2010 at 16:02

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