Retrieving option set from CRM without SDK

Question

I am writing an SSIS package that reads XML files and loads the data from the XML files into the CRM 2011 database. As it stands, the package reads the title of a client record, compares it to the hard-coded values in my script, and if there is a match, the value of the title option set is assigned.

However, my client wishes to now have the option set expandable. This would require the SSIS package to retrieve the entire option set from CRM, to compare the current possible values with the value in the record. But the SSIS does not use the Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk assembly - the package uses condition expressions and invokes the CRM API to get and set entities.

So I cannot use a RetrieveAttributeRequest (the normal way when using the Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk assembly) to retrieve the option set. Is there another way?

Answer 1

You can get this information by looking at the SQL view "FilteredStringMap". You need to know the entity name, attribute name and also which language code you want to look at.

This is supported by Microsoft as it is using a filtered view.