Chapter 5: Work with Data Sources

How to…

Overview

• Create forms from an existing XML schema or file

• Create forms from an existing SQL Server or Access databases

• Create forms from XML web services

Chapter 4 walked you through the process of creating your first InfoPath form—the method you used was to build the form on-the-fly, whereby you built the form based on your requirements, with no preexisting data source. While this provides an easy method to get started with InfoPath, the most common use of InfoPath is to populate an existing database or data source.

In this chapter, you are going to look at how to create InfoPath forms that can “push” data into different data sources, starting with forms created from an existing XML file, moving through to forms that submit data to Microsoft SQL Server or Access databases, and finishing off with forms that are submitted to a web service. At the end of the chapter, you should be able to create your own simple forms that can connect and submit data to these different types of data sources.