Microsoft SharePoint as data source

Goal

This document describes how to use Microsoft SharePoint as a Denodo Virtual DataPort data source.

Content

Microsoft SharePoint is a web application that enables organizations to work by letting users share documents, data and information.

Virtual DataPort can connect to SharePoint in order to use it as a data source and to import information. Although there are several options to integrate a SharePoint List, the recommended ways to import Microsoft SharePoint Lists into Virtual DataPort are through OData or the RSS interface

Connecting through OData

To get the OData URL from the SharePoint Server the following steps are required:

1. Open a browser and navigate to the following URL:

Where  <servername> is the name of the SharePoint server. This will be the Service Endpoint. 

2. Select the data feed you want to connect with. In the connection parameters this will be the Entity Collection.
3. Finally it is necessary to determine the OData version (Service Version). You can do it by checking the following URL:

Once you have the endpoint and the entity collection then they can be imported into VDP using the Denodo OData2 Custom Wrapper:

1. Download the OData2 Custom Wrapper from the DenodoConnects section of the Denodo Support Site.
2. Import the custom wrapper following the instructions provided in the documentation.
3. Create a new Custom Data Source selecting New > Data Source > Custom in the contextual menu.

• On “Select Jars” select the imported extension.
• Fill the “Class name” field with:

com.denodo.connect.odata.wrapper.ODataWrapper

4. Click the Refresh Input Parameters to show the parameters related to the wrapper to be configured.
5. The following wrapper parameters to be configured as follow to define datasource:

• Service Endpoint (mandatory): obtained in the previous steps.
• Service Format (mandatory): XML-Atom
• Service Version: obtained in the previous steps.
• Use the “NTLM Authentication”  and/or “Proxy” fields if required.
• Once all the required parameters are provided then save the datasource.

6. Select the Create Base View option and provide the “Entity Collection” to query

Note: To configure OData 2 Wrapper using OAuth Authentication, refer to the knowledge base article How to connect Denodo to Sharepoint Online using OData with OAuth authentication.

Connecting through RSS

To get the RSS URL from the SharePoint Server the following steps are required:

1. Navigate to the site where the List is stored.
2. On the left top corner of the screen select Site actions - View All Site Content.
3. Select the list that is going to be used.
4. Once the list has been selected open the List Tools menu and select the List option.
5. In order to access the list using the RSS feed click on the RSS feed icon of the top menu and copy the RSS URL.

Once you have the RSS URL it can be imported into VDP using an XML data source:

1. Create a new XML Data source selecting New > Data Source > XML in the contextual menu.
2. Select “Http Client” as “Data route” and click on the “Configure” button.
3. On the “URL” field insert the RSS URL.
4. Fill the “Authentication” Tab if required and click the “OK” button. By default, SharePoint uses NTLM authentication but other authentication modes might be configured.
5. Create the Base View.
6. Execute the view and get the results.

Although the recommended ways to import data from Microsoft SharePoint are through the RSS interface and OData, there are other possible ways to import information:

• Using the List XML with its List GUID.
• Using the SharePoint Web Services (WSS).
• Creating an ITPilot wrapper to perform a web extraction on the SharePoint web interface.

These are more complex options and are not recommended unless the recommended options do not contain all the information that has to be imported into Virtual DataPort.