Using SharePoint Web Services

In furthering the conceptualization of this Visual Learning application, I was first struck by the possible approaches to querying the needed data. While I am predominately visual and think in terms of how things might look when complete, I recognize that getting data out of SharePoint might be a bit more difficult task than in some other cases.

However, there is much discussion on the use of SharePoint's web services. Some focus specifically on aggregating content from other places to create mash-ups, while others do note the possible importance of getting data out of SharePoint.

So over the next couple of days I'm going to be looking into the process of accessing the SharePoint web services feature and see how well it works. To do this I think I'm going to attempt a script using the python and ZSI library, or PHP and the nuSOAP model.

Either way, it is my hope that the technology will stand alone, outside of SharePoint and yet still be able to work well with the various MySites WSU has. If it works with the MySites then I don't see why it wouldn't work with plone or drupal. One thing that might be an issue is the need to allow for an XML-RPC approach as both Plone and Drupal utilize rpc.

However, more in connection with patterns is the need of this application to be able query the Liberating Voices! patterns. If I can get the query and parsing bit of the application then Yishay maybe able to extend his Mind mapping application to enable through the web mapping. Both pieces together could prove to be a very cool and very powerful solution for visual knowledge representation.