Surface External Data From an SQL DB

Question

I am trying to surface data from an external SQL database in Sitecore. Ideally the data will be represented as items in the Sitecore content tree.

The official Sitecore documentation for "Integrating External Data Sources" is for Sitecore version 5. Does anyone know where I could find, or share a simple example of how I could surface external data in Sitecore 6.5. All the information I have found on it seems to be out of date.

Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

You need to implement a custom data provider. Here is a good tutorial: http://www.techphoria414.com/Blog/2011/January/Black-Art-of-Sitecore-Data-Providers

Also have a look at this sdn article. It is a bit out of date but it still has relevant points. http://sdn.sitecore.net/Developer/Integrating%20External%20Data%20Sources.aspx

Check out the YouTube data shared source data provider.