Sharepoint and Integration Services

In some cases the best way to import data to our portal is not to use BDC due complexity that it involves. Somebody could think that with SSIS we can insert elements in a SharePoint list OOB, but it is not true. The Web Service Task permits to interact with an external web service but is very limited because are not compatible with all web services. The Lists.asmx web service from SharePoint is not supported and you have to take a workaround to import information to SharePoint.

The solution is trivial: you can generate a proxy class to communicate with your service with de WSDL.exe tool included in the command line tools of VS2005. Then you can add a Script Task to your SSIS project and add to the script a new class with the code that you have generated with WSDL.exe. After the necessaries "add references" you can interact with your WSS or MOSS through its web services.

And to upload document… you can use the UploadData of the WebClient class.

Enjoy it!