Shirantadka Rajashekhar

A Deadly cocktail of Infopath and SQL 2005

I am trying to make InfoPath work as a preferred client for SQL 2005 Native Web services. Here is what I have in Mind

1. SQL 2005 native web services and Service broker form a tremendous pair for developing asynchronous solutions. For Example, a workflow framework that is hosted in SQL.
2. InfoPath with the XML support is a natural choice for throwing out user readable forms. This data thus captured/edited/acted upon in any other way can be sent to SQL through a simple SOAP post.
3. I have worked on and sorted out the post part and also have the mechanisms necessary to get the Service Broker logic started. But the problem lies in consuming the some web services (Receive WS).
4. This is where I was stuck. I thought we could write some sort of an InfoPath/SQL 2005 adapter that would make things easy for InfoPath to receive data like error messages, status updates etc.
5. I have already explored the Secondary data source route…but wanted to know if there was a more standard and reusable way to get this to happen.
6. I would not want to introduce an ASP.NET WS (.asmx) unless it’s absolutely necessary as it’s an extra layer and I want to eliminate that extra infrastructure.

Any pointers???