Accessing data from lists in sub-sites at parent site level

Question

I have few sites in one of my site. There is a list, with same name say 'SOW' in all of these sites, containing site specific data.
Now, at the parent site i want to see all the data at one place from the 'SOW' list in each of the sub-sites. Below is the representation of what i mean.

                                A (Root Site)

            A1(Sub-Site)  A2(Sub-site)   A2(Sub-site) A2(Sub-site)      
             SOW(List)      SOW(List)      SOW(List)    SOW(List)

Now, at "A (Root Site)" i want to see all the data from 'SOW(List)' of each "A1(Sub-Site)", "A2(Sub-site)", "A2(Sub-site)" and "A2(Sub-site)"

Basically, i want to know whether we have some Out of the Box solution for this scenario. If not, let me know some custom solution.

Thanks in Advance.

Answer 1

For this kind of problem there are multiple solutions:

• Content Query Web Part (create your own Content Type and query across sub-sites, requires either Publishing site or use the trick to create a Style Library on Top-Level site where you copy all XSLT)
• DataView web part with linked data sources (not so flexible or easy to modify for more dynamic scenarios) http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/display-data-from-multiple-sources-in-a-single-data-view-HA010099144.aspx
• Designer based - change the SPDataSource as used here http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepointdesigner/archive/2007/04/24/spdatasource-and-rollups-with-the-data-view.aspx
• Code-based - SPSiteDataQuery (e.g. http://darrinbishop.com/blog/2007/04/spsitedataquery-for-cross-site-and-cross-list-searches)
• use it with CrossListQueryCache for better performances
• Search Web Part with Site Collection specific scope (e.g. use
  contentType)

These are most used solutions for cross sites rollups, from these the Search based can be expanded further for Farm.

Hope it helps, C:\Marius

Answer 2

You can use xsltListViewWebPart to achieve this, check out my blog for more detailed steps on Display Parent List in SubSite using SharePoint 2010 http://tad.co.in/?p=764