Find Database Column Names for List Columns

Question

I am attempting to create a Database View derived from Sharepoint List Data in Sharepoint 2010.

Currently to do this I have simply added a new List Item with Unique values, and manually mapped the columns to their corresponding database columns.

For example: FirstName maps to nvarchar20, LastName maps to nvarchar21 ect...

After doing this a couple times I figured there has to be an easier way of determining this mapping without having to go through each column manually to determine where the data is stored in the database.

Is there a simple way of mapping List Columns to Database columns?

Answer 1

I'd highly discourage doing this kind of operation.

Even though reads from the content database only makes your installation unsupported as long as they are occuring, you shouldn't do them.

The problems you'll run into are:

• You are very likely to affect SharePoints operations in unsupported ways remember you can't even read without introducing locks
• You run a very high risk of returning wrong information as you may not fully understand the database tables, including how versioning, approval, recyclebin, ... is handled
• Even if you don't run into these problems initialy any service pack/hot fix installed on SharePoint may change database schema/access in such a way that you run into them

But if AGAINST MY ADVICE you still want to do it. Then you can get information about each fields placement in the database by enumerating the lists Fields and from the SPField.SchemaXml retrieve the attributes ColName and RowOrdinal

Please look into if providing a Web/REST service isn't an option.

Answer 2

What are you attempting to accomplish? Reading SharePoint databases can cause locking problems. Writing to SharePoint databases will put you in an unsupported state. See KB841057

Answer 3

Microsoft does not support accessing SharePoint database directly via SQL. As @Trevor said, it will put your environment in an unsupported state and we (in this community) cannot provide you any guidance that would result in such.

Sometime ago I did write a blog post about how to access SharePoint data via the SharePoint object model in an SQL CLR function. You could give this a shot: http://www.sharepointjohn.com/sharepoint-2010-sql-server-2008-query-the-sharepoint-object-model-from-a-net-sql-server-clr-function/

Answer 4

Another option would be to hook into the list via SQL Server Reporting Services and create a reporting endpoint. This would then allow you to secure the data as you want, fetch the data in a supported way and provide the users the functionality they need.

Access to the report is secured through SSRS and then within the report itself, you can dictate who is going to see what.