How to display a database table in a page, based on the current Site Collection Subsite

Question

being new to the Sharepoint scene, I was wondering what the best approach was in this situation.

I have a few customers, who all login into the Main Home site, and then get a link to their resp. Subsite according to their Company Name.

I was wondering what kind of approach I should take to let the subsite have a page which displays the table, filtered with a WHERE companyName = 'nameOfCompany'-clause.

Can anyone give me some information on this? I should use a Webpart for this?

Regards

Sharepoint2010 btw

Answer 1

I would look into using the built-in Query String (URL) filter:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/connect-a-query-string-url-filter-web-part-to-another-web-part-HA010250999.aspx

Basically what this does, is allows a web part or web parts on the page (that get input from the filter, to filter based off a parameter that comes in via the URL it self.

You would define a parameter "CompanyName" and then the URL would take the form of http://yoursiturl/yourpage.aspx?CompanyName='nameOfCompany'.

If that msdn article does not help, Laura Rogers did a series on using the Query String URL filters that should be helpful.

http://sharepoint911.com/blogs/laura/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=676af157-7d96-4e15-a987-54b8a3e4d948&ID=77

From reading your question, it sounds like you actually have two questions:

1. how to connect your page or webparts on your page to an Access database source
2. How you filter that page template (automatically) by Company name.

The Query String (URL) filter should help with 2.

Answer 2

You can use

Current User Filter

Please check following video tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCZ1XyPb9vg Although this tutorial is for MOSS but is applicable for SharePoint 2010 also.

Answer 3

It would be pretty trivial to create your own webpart from Visual Studio that connects to the database and queries as you want. It would be easier to filter based on a webpart property.

Visual Studio 2010 has an out of the box Visual Web Part project template wich will get you cooking with gas relatively quickly.

You can cache the data returned from the query if required and this will help with any concerns when the underlying database is deleted and re-created.