The Data Integration Toolset puts more power into the hands of your SharePoint developers, allowing you to connect to and integrate data from external sources into SharePoint, and also write back data to those external sources. Build your own custom displays – including enterprise mashups – from a variety of sources. With the Toolset, it is easier, faster, more cost–effective and maintainable to build custom solutions than writing your own code.
With the Toolset you can build hundreds of composite applications. You can connect to any data within or outside of SharePoint. You can reuse any application and any component. You can do all of this without needing custom code development. The various sections of this site provide you with information and live, hands-on business solution examples to demonstrate how it is now possible for organizations to transform SharePoint into a front-end, work environment for their enterprise, at a fraction of the time and ongoing costs of alternative approaches.
The extensive utility of the Toolset is driven by these five core aspects of its design:
- Modular – Its unique modular, n–tier, component-based design provides extensive flexibility and reusability that are critical to the distributed architecture of SharePoint
- Comprehensive – It vastly reduces the need for custom code development and increases maintainability, by providing an end–to–end set of integrated components...from customizable end user displays and read-write forms, to mashup and business analysis adapters, to modular data providers, to data connection services
- XML API – Its open, non–proprietary XML API eliminates the need to code to proprietary interfaces and exposes information for use by third party developers or off-the-shelf components
- Data Services – Extensive data services provide integration with external data sources and applications via ADO, XML, http, and web services, as well as integration of SharePoint data
- Security – Through its modularity it leverages the SharePoint ACL’s on the front end with extensive support for security of back-end connections including basic authentication, Windows authentication, custom membership providers, and token-based authentication.